Biden addresses special counsel classified documents report
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An angry and animated Joe Biden hit back at a Republican prosecutor’s claim that his memory is faulty during a last-minute and at-times chaotic press conference on Thursday.
The president hit out at parts of the report released earlier in the day by Justice Department special counsel Robert Hur into his handling of classified documents and became enfuriated at a suggestion that he did not remember the year his late son, Beau Biden, died from brain cancer.
Later, while making reference to war in the Middle East, Mr Biden appeared to confuse Mexico with Egypt, declaring: “The president of Mexico did not want to open up the gate to allow humanitarian material to get in. I talked to him. I convinced to open the gate.”
Mr Hur’s report concluded that Mr Biden will not face charges for “willfully” holding onto documents after he left office as Barack Obama’s vice president in January 2017.
It stated that the materials included files on military policy in Afghanistan and handwritten notes on national security, also suggesting that Mr Biden would look like an “elderly man with a poor memory” to a jury if he were to be hit with criminal charges.
Watch as Biden responds to report at Virginia rally
Classified documents by dog bed, memory troubles and ghostwriter deleting files: Takeaways from Biden report
Overwhelmed by the 388-page PDF document released by Special Counsel Robert Hur today?
Don’t worry.
From John Bowden, check out the key takeaways from Mr Hur’s report:
In pictures: Classified documents found in Biden’s garage and home
Check out some of the key photos from Robert Hur’s report, from The Independent’s Ariana Baio:
Biden mixes up Mexico and Egypt at surprise presser to address claims of memory loss
President Joe Biden appeared to confuse Mexico with Egypt, in a press conference on Thursday called to refute allegations of his poor memory.
Mike Bedigan has the full story:
Analysis: Joe Biden just denied he was mentally unfit – then made things even worse
In the wake of the classified documents report from Special Counsel Robert Hur, the president sought to convince voters there were no problems with his memory. Instead, Joe Biden did exactly what his team had been hoping to avoid, writes John Bowden in Washington DC.
Read his full report here:
ICYMI: Personal counsel to Joe Biden responds to report
Bob Bauer, personal counsel to President Joe Biden, criticised the investigation in a statement Thursday.
“The Special Counsel could not refrain from investigative excess, perhaps unsurprising given the intense pressures of the current political environment,” Mr Bauer said in a statement. “Whatever the impact of those pressures on the final Report, it flouts [Department of Justice] regulations and norms.” Mr Bauer also said Mr Biden gave his “unprecedented” cooperation to the investigation.
“The Special Counsel also noted the President’s complete cooperation, including the President’s unprecedented decision to open up every room of his family home and beach house to comprehensive FBI searches as well as a voluntary interview conducted over two days,” Mr Bauer said.
In pictures: Joe Biden’s dramatic surprise press conference
Joe Biden surprise press conference
ANALYSIS: Joe Biden took Afghanistan notes he believed were ‘the most important decisions’ from his vice presidency
The actual contents of the president’s classified stash appear to have been wholly centred on, in retrospect, one of the key moments of the Obama-Biden administration. In 2009, the Democratic president undertook a controversial decision to surge troops to Afghanistan in the hopes of driving Taliban forces out of the country entirely; a decision which many saw as an about-face given Barack Obama’s campaign promise to end the war in Iraq. Mr Biden was one of the loudest voices against that decision at the time, a view which appears vindicated given the Taliban’s takeover of the country in 2021 after Donald Trump began a withdrawal of US contractors and military forces in the final year of his presidency. And the materials the president “removed from the ordinary flow of paper” at the White House were split into two categories: His own, personal, handwritten notes detailing his thinking at the time; and actual documents marked with clear classification labels. One specific document found by FBI agents was a handwritten memo penned by Mr Biden for then-President Obama summing up his arguments against the 2009 troop surge.
Then-Vice President Joe Biden retained these documents because he saw them as a central part of his legacy in the White House, investigators wrote in the report.
“Mr. Biden had a strong motive to keep the classified Afghanistan documents. He believed President Obama’s 2009 troop surge was a mistake on par with Vietnam. He wanted record to show that he was right about Afghanistan; that his critics were wrong; and that he had opposed President Obama’s mistaken decision forcefully when it was made-that his judgment was sound when it mattered most,” read the Hur report.
But some were stored unceremoniously and in a clearly unsecured fashion in the Biden household, wrote investigators.
Read more about the key takeaways from the report:
Biden isn’t the only US politician to make Middle-Eastern mix-up
President Biden is not the only one to have made Middle-Eastern mix-ups.
Last week, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson appeared to confuse Iran with Israel while appearing live on Meet the Press...
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2024-02-09 08:39:38Z
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