Biden left seething over special counsel’s memory loss claim
JOE Biden has said ‘my memory is fine’, after a damning report claimed that his mental faculties were failing.
The US president vented his fury after a special counsel claimed that he was an ‘elderly man with a poor memory’ who could not remember when his son died.
Mr Biden, 81, said the allegation was ‘just plain wrong’ and that his son’s death was ‘none of their damn business’.
During the press conference on Thursday night, he mixed up the presidents of Egypt and Mexico – exactly the kind of error the report described.
It has renewed focus on Mr Biden’s age as he seeks a second term, which would make him 86 when he leaves office.
The oldest US president in history, Mr Biden makes gaffes on almost every public appearance, which are seized on by his likely Republican rival Donald Trump as proof he is unfit for office.
Mr Biden called a hastily arranged press conference in the White House two hours after the report by special counsel Robert Hur was released.
The president ‘wilfully’ retained classified material after he left office as vice president in 2017, Mr Hur concluded after a yearlong investigation.
But a jury would have had reasonable doubt in Mr Biden’s motives as he is a ‘sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory’, it said.
The report also said Mr Biden could not remember the dates he was vice president or the year his son Beau died, which was 2015.
Speaking at the White House, Mr Biden said: ‘I’ve seen the headlines since the report was released about my wilful retention of documents. These assertions are not only misleading, they’re just plain wrong. In addition, I know there’s some attention paid to the language in the report about my recollection of events. There’s even some reference that I don’t remember when my son died.
‘How the hell dare he raise that? Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself it wasn’t any of their damned business,’ he said.
Fox News journalist Peter Doocy, who has repeatedly clashed with the Biden White House, asked: ‘How bad is your memory and can you continue as president?’
Mr Biden shot back: ‘My memory is so bad I let you speak.’
Asked by another journalist if his memory had worsened, Mr Biden said: ‘I know what the hell I’m doing. My memory has not gotten worse. My memory is fine. Take a look at what I have done since becoming president.’
Sensitive documents related to Afghanistan were previously found in a garage at Mr Biden’s Delaware home. Mr Hur’s report said the way the classified material was stored randomly supported the idea that Mr Biden’s actions were not deliberate.
The material was found in a ‘badly damaged box in the garage, near a collapsed dog crate, a dog bed, a Zappos [shoe retailer] box, an empty bucket, a broken lamp wrapped with duct tape, potting soil and synthetic firewood’, the report said.
The president sought to set himself apart from Mr Trump, 77, who faces 40 criminal charges which carry up to 450 years in prison, for resisting handing over documents after he left the White House in 2021.
‘How the hell dare he raise that?’ ‘I wish I had paid more attention’
Mr Biden said: ‘It was in my house. It wasn’t out like in Mar-aLago in a public place, and none of it was high classified.’
Mr Hur determined that 12 documents contained top-secret information, in addition to 10 handwritten notebooks and two notecards kept by Mr Biden.
He blamed his aide, saying the documents were ‘not moved by me – by my staff’.
He added: ‘I wish I had paid more attention to how the documents were being moved.’
During the conference, Mr Biden confused president Abdel Fattah El-Sisi of Egypt with the president of Mexico when talking about the war in Gaza – the latest in dozens of similar gaffes.
He said: ‘I think, as you know, initially, the president of Mexico, Sisi, did not want to open up the gate to humanitarian material to get in.’