© Reuters. U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks on the White Home in Washington, U.S., February 8, 2024. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
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By Jeff Mason and Steve Holland
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The White Home on Friday blasted a report from a Division of Justice particular counsel that recommended President Joe Biden was struggling reminiscence lapses, and Vice President Kamala Harris known as the report “clearly politically motivated.”
The report from Particular Counsel Robert Hur, a former U.S. lawyer in Maryland throughout Republican Donald Trump’s administration, has prompted an election-year brawl and renewed questions on Biden’s superior age. This week Biden, 81, combined up the names of a number of world leaders.
Ian Sams, spokesperson for the White Home authorized counsel’s workplace, joined press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre within the White Home briefing room to criticize Hur’s report and lift questions on his motivation.
Hur stated in a report launched on Thursday that he selected to not carry legal fees following a 15-month investigation into Biden’s dealing with of labeled paperwork as a result of the president cooperated.
Hur stated Biden can be tough to convict and described him as a “well-meaning, aged man with a poor reminiscence” who was not capable of recall to investigators when his son, Beau Biden, died.
“We do not assume that a part of the report lives in actuality,” Jean-Pierre stated.
“We simply reject that that is true,” Sams stated.
Harris rushed to Biden’s protection when requested concerning the challenge after a White Home look.
“The best way that the president’s demeanor in that report was characterised couldn’t be extra unsuitable on the information and (is)clearly politically motivated,” she stated, in accordance with a pool report.
Biden and Legal professional Normal Merrick Garland have sought to current the Division of Justice as impartial from the White Home, after Trump put stress on the DOJ to close down a probe into Russia’s function within the 2016 election.
Biden stated Thursday night he nonetheless believed particular counsels ought to have been appointed to analyze whether or not he or Trump had mishandled labeled paperwork.
Nonetheless, Sams recommended Hur, a Republican, could have been influenced by politics.
“We’re in a really pressurized political surroundings. And when you’re the primary particular counsel in historical past to not indict anyone, there may be stress to criticize and to make, you already know, statements that could be and in any other case you would not make,” Sams stated.
Sams stated the particular counsel’s remark that Biden couldn’t keep in mind the date of his son’s demise was “actually out of bounds.” Biden reacted furiously on Thursday evening to Hur’s remark about his son, saying “how the hell dare he” carry this up.
Biden’s son Beau Biden died in 2015 after battling mind most cancers. The president repeatedly invokes the demise of his son when consoling family members of service members who died in motion or victims of gun violence, and visits his grave website on the Might 30 anniversary of his demise.
Biden gave the interviews that the particular counsel report was based mostly on Oct. 8 and 9, as he organized the U.S. response to the Oct. 7 Hamas assault on Israel.
Sams stated Biden has ordered institution of a activity drive to evaluation the dealing with of labeled info in the course of the transition interval between a president and his successor.
Jean-Pierre stated Biden’s doctor throughout his bodily examination final yr opted to not give Biden a cognitive take a look at as a result of he clearly was capable of deal with the trials of being president.
Trump, 77, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, has misidentified folks as nicely, just lately complicated Republican opponent Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat who was speaker of the Home of Representatives when he was in energy.
Along with a labeled paperwork investigation, Trump faces lawsuits, fees, trials and fines associated to his makes an attempt to overturn Biden’s 2020 election win, enterprise dealings and sexual abuse.