Garland defends mind of OI' Joe
AG claims Biden is ‘not impaired’
WASHINGTON — Attorney General Merrick Garland repeatedly defended President Biden’s cognitive fitness for office Tuesday, telling Congress the commander in chief “has no impairment,” although special counsel Robert Hur cited Biden’s foggy memory as one reason not to prosecute him for mishandling classified records.
Garland, 71, testified to the House Appropriations Committee that he “could not have more confidence” in the 81-year-old president’s mental fitness, arguing Hur “did not say anything like that” in his February report, although the document made Biden’s perceived decline a point in recommending against criminal charges.
“I have watched [Biden] expertly guide meetings of staff and Cabinet members on issues of foreign affairs and military strategy and policy in the incredibly complex world in which we now face and in which he has been decisive in instructions to the staff and decisive in making the decisions necessary to protect the country.”
“Likewise,” he added, “with respect to domestic policy discussions — these are intricate, complicated questions — he has guided all of us through in order to reach results that are helpful and important and beneficial to the American people.”
Garland, who appointed Hur and accepted his recommendation not to charge Biden, chided Rep. Ben Cline (R-Va.) for raising the matter, telling him at one point, “the president has no impairment . . . I reject your characterization.”
In another exchange, Garland reprimanded Rep. Mike Garcia (R-Calif.) for paraphrasing Hur by saying that the rationale for not prosecuting Biden “was that he was cognitively incapable of understanding what he was doing and he was too old to face charges.”
“That is not at all what Mr. Hur said,” Garland scolded. “And I urge everyone to read again what he said. He did not say anything like that.”
Hur’s report cites “several defenses” that Biden could raise at a trial that could establish “reasonable doubt” as to whether he willfully hoarded sensitive papers over decades in office, but the special counsel gave significant weight to how jurors would perceive Biden’s memory.
Hur wrote: “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.
“Given Mr. Biden’s limited precision and recall during his interviews with his ghostwriter [Mark Zwonitzer] and with our office, jurors may hesitate to place too much evidentiary weight on a single eight-word utterance.”
Hur also wrote that “Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
Other potential defenses that Hur cited included that the documents “could have been stored, by mistake and without his knowledge, at his Delaware home” and that there was a “shortage of evidence” such as photos showing that classified documents were indeed at the Virginia home, as Biden said on tape.
Garland is facing a potential contempt vote by House Republicans for refusing to hand over tapes of Biden’s interviews with Hur on Oct. 8 and 9, 2023. Transcripts show apparent Biden confusion, but Garland argues it would violate department norms to provide the actual audio, which likely would be used by Republicans to oppose Biden’s bid for a second term in the November election.
House Republicans also want tapes of Zwonitzer’s testimony. The ghostwriter, with whom Biden allegedly shared classified information, avoided criminal charges despite admitting he deleted recordings of his conversations with Biden after learning of Hur’s investigation.
Cline told Garland on Tuesday that there’s a public perception that the Justice Department is biased and that there’s a “crisis of confidence in this country” as former President Donald Trump, 77, faces criminal charges for allegedly mishandling classified documents and obstructing authorities.