Democrats on Friday defended President Joe Biden and rebuked the special counsel investigating Biden’s handling of classified documents as a Republican prosecutor with a political agenda.
In his report, Hur declined to press charges against Biden for keeping classified documents in his home and private office after becoming vice president. But Huron’s report also said Biden presented himself in interviews with investigators as a “sympathetic, well-intentioned person. an old man with poor memory” and noted several instances in which the president had difficulty remembering specific dates.
Vice President Kamala Harris told reporters at an event on preventing gun violence in Washington on Friday that the report was “inaccurate and inappropriate.”
“The characterization of the president’s conduct in this report could not be more factually incorrect,” he said, adding: “And clearly politically motivated, gratuitous.”
“It’s 350 pages to say Joe Biden shouldn’t be indicted here either. It’s just smearing and cheap shots and just taking things out of context or even making things up,” said Sen. John Fetterman, D-Penn., of Biden-Harris. spoke to reporters Friday about gun violence during his campaign.
“You don’t need 350 pages to say that … it’s so clear there was an agenda,” Fetterman said.
Although Hur did not serve as a guerrilla, he was appointed by Trump in 2017 To serve as the United States Attorney for the State of Maryland. Prior to that, he served as a key advisor to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein at the Department of Justice during the Trump administration.
Some in private Democrats have voiced their concerns Others have publicly offered criticism of Huron about how the revelations in Huron’s report will affect Biden’s re-election campaign.
Jim Messina, who ran President Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, responded directly to what some have called an “old man with a failing memory.” Biden took on critics.
“We need to stop gratuitously looking at one line in a long, heavily redacted special counsel’s report that finds no crime, because that is a greater responsibility than Trump’s 91 criminal charges and is responsible for. don’t force it,” Messina said one post On X.
Biden fiercely defended his mental abilities In a protest speech on Thursday evening. “My memory is good,” he said.
The president also criticized the report for including characterizations of Hur’s memorial.
“Because I remember the events, I know that some of the language in the report was taken care of. There’s even a reference that I don’t remember when my son died,” Biden told reporters.
He added: “How in the hell did he dare bring that up? To be honest, when they asked me the question, I thought to myself, it’s none of their damn business.”
Former Attorney General Eric Holder, who worked in the Obama administration, An inscription in X says Huron’s report contains many unfounded claims and is completely inconsistent with long-standing reports. [Department of Justice] traditions”.
Daniel Goldman of New York, who served as the lead Democratic counsel in the first impeachment of then-President Donald Trump, told ABC News on Thursday: “Everybody will soon realize that this is a Republican special counsel. went out of his way to edit, to include material in his report that was unnecessary and irrelevant to his assignment.”
He accused Hur of boosting Republican efforts to “create a false equivalency between President Biden and former President Trump.”
Former FBI chief counsel Alan Weissman told MSNBC on Thursday that the report’s portrayal of Biden was “completely inconsistent.”
He added: “It’s not the job of the Department of Justice … to talk about your memory today – it’s irrelevant, it’s gratuitous. It’s also something you shouldn’t be doing by putting your thumb on the scale that could have political repercussions.”
Other Democrats simply downplayed the concerns highlighted in the report, saying Biden’s record should speak for itself.
In a campaign call Friday, Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., the youngest member of Congress, said voters will focus more on Biden’s accomplishments as president.
“No. 1, yes, OK, we know that President Biden is getting old… That doesn’t sound like breaking news to me,” Frost told reporters.
He added: “What comes to me as the No. 1 news is 15 million job creations, rising wages, lower inflation. It sounds like news — beating Big Pharma and capping insulin at $35, a bipartisan infrastructure bill, the first-ever weapon office of violence prevention.