As GOP pounces on memory claims in report, Biden pushes back

(NewsNation) — Although a government report said President Joe Biden shouldn’t face criminal charges over his handling of classified documents, references made in it to his memory may have political implications.

Department of Justice Special Counsel Robert Hur started investigating Biden after a handful of classified documents were discovered at his home in Delaware and a former Washington, D.C., office he used after he left the White House in 2016.

“We conclude that no criminal charges are warranted in this matter,” the report, released Thursday, said. “We would reach the same conclusion even if Department of Justice policy did not foreclose criminal charges against a sitting president.”

However, Republicans have been highlighting, over and over again, every instance in Hur’s report that talks about the president’s mental state, and his inability to remember certain instances.

Biden’s “memory was significantly limited” during interviews with the DOJ’s office in 2023, according to the report. The report also said that the documents found at Biden’s home could have been forgotten about.

One of the reasons Hur didn’t recommend criminal charges, it said, was because “at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.”

NewsNation sources with the Biden campaign said they see the report’s ultimate conclusion as a win for the president — but it will be up to voters whether or not allegations about the president’s memory hurt him in the general election this year, especially when there were already concerns about his age.

On X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson put out a statement with other Republican leaders saying that among the most “disturbing” parts of the report are what it suggested about Biden’s memory.

“A man too incapable of being held accountable for mishandling classified information is certainly unfit for the Oval Office,” the statement said.

One congresswoman from New York, Republican Rep. Claudia Tenney, even went as far as sending a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland asking him to consider the 25th Amendment, which is essentially a mechanism wherein the president’s cabinet can depose a president if he or she is unfit or unable to do the job.

Currently 81, Biden would be 82 at the next inauguration if elected again, and 85 at the end of a potential second term. Former President Donald Trump, the leading Republican candidate for president, is only a few years younger at 77.

Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina Gov. who is also running to be the Republican presidential candidate, pointed this out in a statement, though she also made a jab at Biden.

While she claimed Biden lacks the “mental capacity” to be president, Haley added Trump “has his own mental deficiencies” as well.

“I have long said the first party to retire its 80-year-old candidate will win the White House,” she said.

At a rare late-night, last-minute press conference Thursday, Biden defended himself, insisting to reporters that his “memory is fine” and that he is the most qualified person to serve as president.

NewsNation sources say Biden was moved to call the news conference because of a passage in the report that said he didn’t remember his late son Beau Biden’s death.

“How in the hell dare he raise that?” Biden asked during the news conference.

White House attorneys responded to the report in a letter to the special counsel, calling his characterizations of Biden’s mental state highly prejudicial, inappropriate and not supported by facts.

Meanwhile, many Democrats on Capitol Hill are trying to avoid the matter altogether.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, did say the report explicitly notes there’s no comparison between Biden’s case and charges against Trump, who was indicted over his alleged mishandling of classified documents last year.

It was this part of the report that Democrats focused on while brushing off other criticisms of Biden.

At a briefing Friday, White House spokesperson Ian Sams reiterated that experts called the comments on Biden’s personal character “out of line and inappropriate.”

“You’re left to wonder why this report spends time making gratuitous and inappropriate criticisms of the president,” Sams said.

Asked by reporters if Biden would take a mental competency test, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the president’s doctor last year told her one wasn’t warranted.

Vice President Kamala Harris, at the end of a gun violence prevention event, also slammed the report, noting that some of the interviews mentioned in it happened just after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel.

“It was an intense moment for the commander in chief of the United States of America,” Harris said, saying she spent countless hours with Biden and other officials in the days that followed and he was “on top of it all.”

She added that “the way that the president’s demeanor in that report was characterized could not be more wrong on the facts and clearly politically motivated, gratuitous.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.