On February 8, Special Counsel Robert Hur released his “Report of the Special Counsel on the Investigation Into Unauthorized Removal, Retention, and Disclosure of Classified Documents Discovered at Locations Including the Penn Biden Center and the Delaware Private Residence of President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.” In their weekly press conference, several MAGAt loyalists attempted to gaslight the American people by claiming that the special counselor decided not to prosecute President Biden because “he was mentally unfit to stand trial. The report said no such thing.”
The report did refer numerous times to what it characterized as Biden’s “limited” and “poor” memory. Those observations were included, Hur wrote, because they factored into his decision about whether he could convince a jury that Biden had acted “willfully” to break the law. And the special counsel wrote that Biden’s age and memory might make him a more sympathetic witness, causing a jury to give him the benefit of the doubt. “We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” the report said. “Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him – by then a former president well into his eighties – of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”
But NOWHERE in the report does it state that President Biden was unfit to stand trial. Furthermore, the above passage is Special Counsel Hur’s opinion, not a fact, and an opinion from a person who is not qualified to diagnose President Biden’s cognitive abilities or limitations. Hur’s opinion is also speculative on how a jury would perceive President Biden IF the DoJ decided to prosecute him.
Even before the GQP weekly presser, Horseface took to X (formerly known as Twitter) to voice her useless opinion…not facts, but opinion.
As for the Republican claims about “two-tiered justice” when it comes to federal prosecutors pursuing a classified documents case against Trump, as we have written, Hur pointed to “several material distinctions” between the cases involving Trump and Biden.
“Unlike the evidence involving Mr. Biden, the allegations set forth in the indictment of Mr. Trump, if proven, would present serious aggravating facts,” the report stated. “Most notably, after being given multiple chances to return classified documents and avoid prosecution, Mr. Trump allegedly did the opposite. According to the indictment, he not only refused to return the documents for many months, but he also obstructed justice by enlisting others to destroy evidence and then to lie about it. In contrast, Mr. Biden turned in classified documents to the National Archives and the Department of Justice, consented to the search of multiple locations including his homes, sat for a voluntary interview, and in other ways cooperated with the investigation.”
