Biden lawyer calls special counsel Hur’s report ‘off the rails’

Democrats are rushing to defend President Joe Biden after he appeared to confuse Mexico with Egypt during a press conference called to refute claims about his poor memory.

Following the release of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report on Thursday – which claimed Mr Biden’s memory was “significantly limited” – Democratic lawmakers pointed to House Speaker Mike Johnson’s own gaffe, where he confused Iran with Israel last week.

Martha McHardy has the story:

President Biden will soon name a high-level task force to recommend procedures that will prevent classified materials from being mishandled or inadvertantly lost during presidential transitions in the future, White House spokesperson Ian Sams said on Friday.

Mr Sams, who serves as a spokesperson for the White House Counsel’s Office, was addressing reporters at the daily White House press briefing following the release of a report from Special Counsel Robert Hur in which Mr Hur, a Republican who served in the Trump administration, assailed Mr Biden’s memory while declining to charge him with any crime stemming from the discovery of classified materials at his Wilmington, Delaware home.

He told reporters that the National Archives has found that the misfiling of classified materials during transitions has been a common occurrence which Mr Biden believes should be fixed.

Andrew Feinberg reports:

John Bowden writes:

Joe Biden tried to brush off concerns about his mental fitness and memory on Thursday at an impromptu press conference – but he made a glaring mistake that undermined his indignant defence of his abilities.

In isolation, it was perhaps just another relatively minor moment of misspeaking for the president, but it came at exactly the wrong moment.

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Andrew Feinberg, our White House correspondent, filed this report:

Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday came out swinging with a full-throated defence of President Joe Biden in the wake of an unflattering report on his conduct by a Republican special prosecutor.

Ms Harris was speaking in the Indian Treaty Room at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building at an event hosted by the White House’s gun violence prevention office when she addressed the matter of Mr Hur’s report, which critics have assailed as including gratuitous attacks on the president even as it announced that he will not face any criminal charges stemming from the discovery of classified documents at his Delaware home.

She said she has been “privileged and proud to serve as vice president of the United States” under Mr Biden, and said Mr Hur’s remarks on Mr Biden’s age and memory were “gratuitous, inaccurate, and inappropriate”.

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A report on the Justice Department’s investigation into Joe Biden’s unauthorised retention of classified materials was made public on Thursday – and it was as troubling for the president and his public image as it was vindicating for those who argued he had committed no crimes.

The report was authored by Robert Hur, a former US attorney appointed by Donald Trump and later elevated to the rank of special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Delivered to Congress this week after many months of investigation and preparation, it recommended no criminal charges for the incumbent president, even were he not protected by immunity from prosecution due to his current stature.

It did, however, contain much that will concern many Americans and was overall far from complimentary of the incumbent president.

The investigators painted a picture of a senile president with severe memory issues whose innocence was less clear than his supporters would have hoped, while not necessarily coming across to a potential jury as malicious or criminal.

Let’s take a look at the key takeaways from Mr Hur’s report: