'My memory is fine' - Biden hits back at special counsel
'My memory is fine' - Biden hits back at special counsel
The US president angrily criticises report on how he dealt with classified documents - which questioned his recollections.
US President Joe Biden has angrily criticised an investigation that found he mishandled top secret files and said he struggled to recall key life events.
In a surprise news briefing on Thursday evening, Mr Biden insisted: "My memory is fine."
He slammed a claim that he could not recollect when his son died, saying: "How the hell dare he raise that?"
The inquiry found Mr Biden "wilfully retained and disclosed" classified files, but decided not to charge him.
Was this a special counsel or a psychiatrist? This dude needs to stay in his lane instead of doing politics
The examples were ridiculous too, like he doesn't have perfect recall of the exact dates that staff members moved certain papers from one office to another 6-7 years ago? During an interview literally the evening after the latest Israeli Gaza conflict started between important foreign policy meetings? No shit. Who would.
The report even talks about lots of other people who didn't recall exact details or dates, but he doesn't go accusing all of Biden's aides of having poor memory too. What a ridiculous and unprofessional political hit job. Looks like this special counsel is hankering for another turmp administration job like his last one.
I can remember exactly what was said. The weather. The general feeling of the conversation, but the date it happened? There'll be a couple month long window, and sometimes I'm wrong about that
I'm more worried that he can't remember who the current leaders of Germany or France are. I understand that the Republican party went all in on fascism so they can't really question the leader, what I don't understand why the Democratic party is also saying that the best person to lead the country out of 340 million people is also someone way past is prime.
This is a man who had his party prevent a primary process and will likely prevent debates in what the same people are telling us is the most important election in our lifetime.
You have all the information before you.
Why do you believe this is not undemocratic elder abuse by the Democratic party leaders?
Do you actually believe the 80+ year old man who can't remember the name 'Hamas' is mentally competent? The same man the majority of Democratic voters believe is too old to be president?
Don't piss on my leg and and tell me it is raining.
This is a man who had his party prevent a primary process
And Trump wouldn't engage in any of the debates. The choices aren't very good.
it's driving me nuts how the DNC are acting like he's everyone's favorite TV host who should get renewed for another season. just this blithe, peppy bullshit about how he beat trump and deserves a victory lap now (but we're still in mortal peril because durmpt (please vote for this 92 year old to end literal fascism))
God, I get Biden is the lesser if two evils but fuck, the election propaganda machine is fucking churning
It never stops, just ramps up every few years.
It's one of the best shots the GOP has at entrenching themselves in power indefinitely. You better believe they and their Russian pals (GRU, tankies, useful idiots) are going to line up to help make it happen any way possible.
Even if he was completely braindead, he'd still be orders of magnitude better than Trump or any of the other neonazis running on the red team.
I don't like the lesser evil shit any more than anyone else here, but let's kick this fascism shit before we get too picky about everyone else.
Yeah, the problem is the Democrats have gone with him as a candidate knowing that this was a critical weakness and point of attack. Hilary Clinton was a bad candidate; Joe Biden is a bad candidate. The Democrat leadership is bad at selecting election winners.
They needed a proper open primary to select a good candidate. Obama was a great candidate, and he won the primaries in a year where the Democrat leadership had decided it was "Clinton's turn".
The republican party leadership is also bad at selecting election winners. Trump is trash but he does have popular support on the Republican side.
Biden is running as the "least bad" option, but with major question marks over his mental fortitude. A young candidate would mean Trump's mental fortitude would be the real issue, but he's getting away with being crazy and showing signs of dementia because attacking Biden's mental state is a good distraction. Total own goal on the Democrat side. It's not too late for Biden to step down for the good of the country and the party, but it's getting to be if the democrat primaries advance much further.
The Special Council is a Trump Appointee. Of course he would inject one of Shit Heads projections.
He’s a Trumpist and a liar, but I’m just repeating myself.
Prove it. Give him the verbal memory test live. If he passes he can run. Do the same for Diaper Don.
I was just thinking today how it'd be great if right before the first debate they gave them both cognitive tests from an independent third party evaluator.
My suspicion would be that both would have deficits but Trump's would end up measuring worse. Not a great result for the country, but would hopefully shut up the degree to which it's brought up regarding Biden.
Direct quotes from the actual report:
Several defenses are likely to create reasonable doubt as to such charges. For example, Mr. Biden could have found the classified Afghanistan documents at his Virginia home in 2017 and then forgotten about them soon after. This could convince some reasonable jurors that he did not retain them willfully. When Mr. Biden told his ghostwriter about finding ''all the classified stuff downstairs," his tone was matter-of-fact. For a person who had viewed classified documents nearly every day for eight years as vice president, including regularly in his home, finding classified documents at home less than a month after leaving office could have been an unremarkable and forgettable event. Notably, the classified Afghanistan documents did not come up again in Mr. Biden's dozens of hours of recorded conversations with the ghostwriter, or in his book. And the place where the Afghanistan documents were eventually found in Mr. Biden's Delaware garage-in a badly damaged box surrounded by household detritus-suggests the documents might have been forgotten.
In addition, Mr. Biden's memory was significantly limited, both during his recorded interviews with the ghostwriter in 2017, and in his interview with our office in 2023. And his cooperation with our investigation, including by reporting to the government that the Afghanistan documents were in his Delaware garage, will likely convince some jurors that he made an innocent mistake, rather than acting willfully-that is, with intent to break the law-as the statute requires.
But another inference the evidence permits is that Mr. Biden returned the binder of classified material to the personal aide because, after leaving office, Mr. Biden did not intend to retain any marked classified documents. As Mr. Biden said in his interview with our office, if he had found marked classified documents after the vice presidency, "I would have gotten rid of them. I would have gotten them back to their source.... I had no purpose for them, and I think it would be inappropriate for me to keep clearly classified documents." Some reasonable jurors may credit this statement and conclude that if Mr. Biden found the classified Afghanistan documents in the Virginia home, he forgot about them rather than willfully retaining them.
Mr. Biden's own words to Zwonitzer provide some support for this conclusion. In the recorded conversation when Mr. Biden told Zwonitzer he had "just found all the classified stuff downstairs," Mr. Biden's tone was remarkably casual. His sole reference to this discovery of classified documents was this brief aside. Mr. Biden did not sound surprised or concerned by the documents he referenced. While reasonable jurors could draw different conclusions from Mr. Biden's seeming nonchalance, one conclusion is that if Mr. Biden discovered classified documents, it simply was not significant to him and was something he could have quickly forgotten.
After all, the Afghanistan documents and the 2009 troop surge played no role in Promise Me, Dad, the book Mr. Biden wrote with Zwonitzer in early 2017. There is no reason to believe Mr. Biden intended to discuss the 2009 Afghanistan troop debate in his book, which, as explained in Chapter Five, covered his experiences in 2014 and 2015. In dozens of hours of recorded conversations with Zwonitzer in 2016 and 2017, when Mr. Biden talked about a vast array of topics, the Afghanistan documents never came up again. This may suggest that after February 16, 2017, the documents were simply not on Mr. Biden's mind.
Mr. Biden's memory also appeared to have significant limitations-both at the time he spoke to Zwonitzer in 2017, as evidenced by their recorded conversations, and today, as evidenced by his recorded interview with our office. Mr. Biden's recorded conversations with Zwonitzer from 2017 are often painfully slow, with Mr. Biden struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries.
It seemed like odd wording for a Special Counsel to use with regards to the President. That doesn't sound in the least professional and doesn't seem to fit within the scope of the classified documents case he was investigating, it seemed almost designed to provoke this sort of argument about Biden's mental fitness.
Regardless, I would vote for a wet paper bag over Trump, doesn't matter, anyone or anything but Trump 2.0.
I see it as the Special Counsel trying to find a cowardly way of keeping Trump from turning the mob against him. The dude knows he's got no case to bring, but if just shows up and says "no charges", then he's immediately going to be branded as a traitor to the MAGA cause, and likely start receiving death threats. He has to find a way to sling some shit at Biden to keep Trump from kicking him out of the cult.
For fucksake.
I think Biden was wrong to take the bait on this. The entire investigation was a partisan fishing expedition, of course calling it such would draw an equivalence to Trump's own legal issues from the Republicans, which is probably what they want. It's better to keep silent and give these hacks nothing to work with.
Feels like this does not need to be breaking news though..
A fair criticism. Post updated! :)
“My memory is fine.”
Seriously the press conference today was so bad. He was off-scriot because he got pulled back in to the current events discussion by journalists, but wow.
To be fair, they were just yelling at him about not remembering his son's death. If it were me, I probably would have blanked too.
Watched it live and I kept waiting for him to yell "Get off my lawn!"
Just what you'd expect someone with a bad memory to say. :)