President Joe Biden reportedly went into a vulgar outburst at a closed-door function in Virginia on Thursday when he learned he would not be charged for mishandling classified documents, but that the special counsel investigating him questioned his cognitive state.
Special counsel Robert Hur released a lengthy report Thursday in which he said he found Biden’s mishandling of sensitive government materials was “willful.”
Hur concluded a jury would likely be “sympathetic” to Biden’s memory issues and recommended he not face charges.
The report also claimed Biden could not recall the years he served as vice president or when his son Beau Biden died.
The Associated Press reported Biden was in Virginia when he was told about the report and that he did not take well to having his mental acuity so publicly challenged.
He specifically took issue with an excerpt from Hur’s report wherein he could not recall when his son died.
The AP reported:
“When asked about the report earlier Thursday in a private moment with a handful of House Democrats ahead of his speech at their suburban Virginia retreat, Biden responded angrily, according to two people familiar with his comments, saying, ‘You think I would f***ing forget the day my son died?”’
The AP reported its sources wished to keep their identities private.
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The excerpt that reportedly angered Biden read:
“[Biden] did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended (‘if it was 2013 — when did I stop being Vice President?’), and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began (‘in 2009, am I still Vice President?’).”
The report added that Biden, when asked by investigators, “did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died.”
According to Politico’s Playbook, Biden shared his anger at another gathering later Thursday — this time with a larger gathering of House Democrats.
The outlet reported:
“[Biden] repeated a version of the line without the F-bomb during a Q&A with a larger group of House Dems. And, according to a source familiar with the planning for the hastily arranged news conference last night, Biden was angry and defiant and still feeling especially outraged by the Beau line when he decided to face reporters and defend himself from Hur’s slurs — and then compounded the questions about his memory issues by referring to Egyptian President ABDEL FATTAH EL-SISI as the ‘president of Mexico.’”
Hur’s report classified Biden as an “elderly man with a poor memory” and cast doubt on the ability of the Justice Department to secure a conviction because any jury might be “sympathetic” to him.
“Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt,” the report stated. “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.”
Hur’s report also described Biden overall as “significantly limited.”
