The report that questioned Biden’s memory reignites the battle between Democrats and Republicans in Congress | USA Elections

The appearance of former special prosecutor Robert Hur in a House of Representatives committee this Tuesday served as the scene of two simultaneous battles. Republican and Democratic congressmen faced each other on behalf of the president of the United States, Joe Biden, and his predecessor, Donald Trump, eight months before the elections in which both will compete for the presidency. In a battle they clashed over their handling of classified documents. In the other, what was at stake was the memory and mental acuity of two elderly candidates.

Hur, appearing at the request of Republicans, concluded that there were no grounds to charge Biden for his improper withholding of classified documents following leaving the vice presidency. However, his exculpatory report did enormous collateral political damage to the president by presenting him as “a nice, well-intentioned old man with a bad memory” and highlighting that he did not remember when he was vice president or when his son died when questioned on October 7 and 8, something that outraged Biden.

The battle over the memory of the 81-year-old president has at times overshadowed the discussion over the classified papers. The Republicans have played in the committee the video of Biden’s press conference in which he responded to the report and in which he referred to Egypt as Mexico, aggravating the situation. The Democrats have counterattacked with an anthology of the nonsense of Trump, 77, with a video that compiled all kinds of lapses by the former president, including confusing Joe Biden with Barack Obama and Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi or saying that Viktor Orbán is the president of Turkey. And later another in which Trump was heard answering in an interrogation over and over once more: “I don’t remember.”

Before his appearance, Hur had provided a transcript of the interrogation to Congress, with some portions blacked out because they were classified as confidential. Reading it also gives rise to different interpretations of Biden’s mental acuity. The president makes some jokes (“the FBI knows my house better than I do”), answers most questions without problem, but he also makes some mistakes and frequently claims not to know or remember the answer to what he is asked. . However, the prosecutor also recognizes a photographic memory of the layout of his house. Despite the slippages in some isolated details, the full text casts doubt on the accuracy of the report by saying that the president has “significant limitations” in his memory.

The most controversial, obviously, are the mentions of the date of his son Beau’s death and his time as vice president, which the prosecutor highlighted in his report. The transcript shows that Biden remembers that his son died on May 30. Immediately, someone tells him that it was in 2015 and he asks, “Was it in 2015 when he died?” And he immediately says: “It was in 2015″. But the transcript also makes it clear that it was Biden who brought up the death of his son and, therefore, that he was not right when he reacted to the report by saying: “How the hell dare you bring that up? Frankly, when they asked me the question, I thought it was none of their damn business.”

The transcript also shows the context in which Biden doubts the years in which he was vice president, something that the prosecutor converted in his report into a phrase (“he did not remember when he was vice president”) that seems very definitive. Hur himself, 51, made a mistake at one point in his appearance this Tuesday when he addressed Biden’s lawyer Dana Remus as Obama’s lawyer, which would certainly not be enough to claim that he does not remember who the president is.

In addition, the document reflects that the interrogation began when Biden had just spoken with the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, following Israel’s attack on Hamas. And it also shows an energetic Biden. On multiple occasions, when Hur suggested a pause, the president encouraged prosecutors to continue: “I’ll keep going all night if we can get this done.” The president has set out to demonstrate that his abilities are appropriate for the position. A medical report endorsed this a few weeks ago and Biden also passed the State of the Union speech test with flying colors.

Hur has defended his report before Congress: “What I wrote is what I believe the evidence shows and what I hope the jury perceives and believes. I didn’t soften my explanation. Nor did I unfairly discredit the president,” he maintained, subjected to crossfire from congressmen on both battlefields. “The evidence and the president himself call into question his memory,” he also stated. Democrats have accused him of gratuitously questioning Biden’s memory, and Republicans have accused him of favoring the president by not pressing charges once morest him. Hur left the Department of Justice this week, appearing as a private citizen.

In the battle over the classified documents, the Republicans’ indignation sounded somewhat false, taking into account the much greater seriousness of the case that afflicts their leader, Donald Trump, accused of 40 crimes related to his retention of official documents in his home. Mar-a Lago (Palm Beach, Florida).

“Joe Biden kept classified information. Joe Biden did not adequately protect classified information, and Joe Biden shared classified information with people he should not have shared classified information with. Joe Biden broke the law because he is a forgetful old man who would seem likeable to a jury. Mr. Hur decided not to press charges,” said the chairman of the commission, Republican Jim Jordan.

Other Republicans, such as Matt Gaetz on the commission and Trump himself, on his social network, have preferred to focus on the alleged double standard of the Department of Justice by not filing charges once morest Biden but once morest Trump. But Hur’s own report mentions the enormous differences between the two cases. Trump withheld a huge volume of documentation, including important defense-related secrets, ignored requests to return the papers when he was discovered, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) ended up raiding his mansion by surprise, seizing secret documents that he had tried to hide. . Instead, Biden (and before Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence) reported on his own initiative that he had discovered the papers and voluntarily agreed to have his home searched without the need for a warrant.

With his experience as a prosecutor, Hur has emerged successfully from the interrogation to which he has been subjected, although it has not left either party happy.

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