(Washington) “Free” and “inappropriate” comments, “politically motivated”: the White House tried on Friday to counterattack after the publication on Thursday of an investigative report with devastating effect mentioning the president’s failing memory Joe Biden.
US Vice President Kamala Harris denounced on Friday the “political motivations” of special prosecutor Robert Hur, author of this 388-page investigation report made public Thursday, in which he did not recommend prosecutions against the president, aged 81, but described him as an “elderly man with a bad memory”.
The magistrate’s report, released following an investigation into classified documents that the US president had in his possession, is “clearly politically motivated”, Kamala Harris, herself a former prosecutor, told reporters at the White House.
PHOTO MICHAEL MCCOY, REUTERS ARCHIVES
Special Prosecutor Robert Hur
“The way the president’s attitude has been described in this report could not be more factually incorrect,” Mr.me Harris.
“Free Reviews”
“When the obvious conclusion is that the evidence does not justify an indictment, one wonders why this report devotes so much space to gratuitous and inappropriate criticism of the president,” added a spokesperson for the executive, Ian Sams, charged Friday by the White House with playing the firefighter on duty.
“To suggest that he could not remember the date of his son’s death is really irrelevant,” said Mr. Sams, brushing aside the idea that this report could harm the president running for re-election: “I think the public is smart,” he said.
If the spokesperson did not accuse the special prosecutor of any political motivation, he suggested that Mr. Hur may have felt pushed to “exceed his attributions”, due to the very polarized American political context, to nine months before the November presidential election.
“We are in a political environment under high pressure. And when you are the first special prosecutor who has not indicted anyone, there is pressure to criticize,” Mr. Sams continued.
In the report released Thursday, special prosecutor Robert Hur concluded that the president had “knowingly kept and disclosed classified documents after his vice presidency while he was a private citizen,” but explained that “an indictment would not be justified not,” not least because a jury would give the benefit of the doubt to “a nice, well-meaning older man with a bad memory.”
He also wrote that Mr. Biden’s memory “had gotten worse”: the president “no longer remembered when he was vice president” or exactly the year his eldest son Beau died.
“How the hell dare he?” », retorted Thursday evening Joe Biden on this subject, visibly very moved, during a televised speech.
“I mean well, I’m an old man and I know what I’m doing, dammit. I don’t have memory problems,” he defended himself.
Robert Hur, a Republican and former federal prosecutor in Maryland, was appointed in January 2023 by the attorney general of the Biden administration, Merrick Garland, to investigate the discovery in December 2022 and January 2023 of classified documents dating from the time where Joe Biden was vice-president (2009-2017) in his residence in Wilmington (Delaware) as well as in a former office.
The Democratic president is running for re-election in November and will most likely find on his way former President Donald Trump, 77 years old and the wide favorite in the Republican primaries.
Mr. Trump’s political supporters were delighted Thursday with the content of the report, notably assuring that Joe Biden was no longer “fit” to govern.