President Biden hastily called a press event this past Thursday evening to proclaim his mental competence in the teeth of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report on Biden’s mishandling of classified documents. Having investigated Biden’s retention and disclosure of such documents, Hur recommended no charges. Hur predicated his recommendation on Biden’s incompetence, concluding either that the mental element of potential charges was lacking and/or that a jury would excuse his misconduct out of pity for his senility.
At his press event (transcript here) Biden denied his incompetence. He didn’t expressly state “I am not a schnook,” but that was the gist of it. He charged Hur himself with impropriety:
I know there’s some attention paid to some language in the report about my recollection of events. There’s even a reference that I don’t remember when my son died. How in the hell dare he raise that.
Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself it wasn’t any of their damn business.
Let me tell you something. Some of you have commented — I wear, since the day he died, every single day, the rosary he got from our Lady of —
Every Memorial Day, we hold a service remembering him, attended by friends and family and the people who loved him. I don’t need anyone — I don’t need anyone to remind me when he passed away or if he passed away.
As Oscar Wilde might put it, one would have to have a heart of stone not to hear Joe Biden use Beau Biden’s death for his own benefit yet again without laughing.
Now NBC News DoJ reporter Ken Dilanian adds this twist in a long story following up on Biden’s remarks — Hur never asked such a question. It was Biden himself who brought up his son’s death. According to two sources familiar with Biden’s interview by the Special Counsel: “It was the president, not Hur or his team, who first introduced Beau Biden’s death.”
Biden raised Beau’s death after being asked about his workflow at a Virginia rental home from 2016 to 2018, the sources said, when a ghost writer was helping him write a memoir about Beau Biden’s death in 2015. Dilanian repots: “Biden began trying to recall that period by discussing what else was happening in his life, and it was at that point in the interview that he appeared confused about when Beau died, the sources said. Biden got the date — May 30 — correct, but not the year.”
Dilanian sought a response from interested parties. The Justice Department, Hur’s office, and the White House declined to comment. I think we can infer that Biden was lying or that he doesn’t remember it that way, if he remembers anything at all. If so, let’s go to the tape.
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.