Biden angrily denounces special counsel questioning his memory

By Michael Hernandez

WASHINGTON (AA) - A visibly perturbed US President Joe Biden sharply rebuked Special Counsel Robert Hur's final report Thursday, lashing out at the independent investigator's questioning of his mental acuity.

Biden was particularly incensed by Hur's allegation that he could not remember the year of the death of his son, Beau Biden, becoming noticeably angered as he recalled the counsel's findings.

"How in the hell dare he raised that?" the president said in nationally televised remarks. "Frankly, when I was asked the question I thought to myself, it wasn't any of their damn business."

The interview took place from Oct. 8-9 in the immediate aftermath of Hamas's cross-border attack on Israel, and the start of Tel Aviv's subsequent war on the besieged Gaza Strip. The president pointed to the crisis as one of the reasons why he may have been unable to recall the date of Beau's death.

Beau Biden, who served in the Iraq war and was later attorney general of the state of Delaware, died in 2015 of cancer at age 46. The president has often spoken publicly of his grief at his older son’s passing.

"I don't need anyone to remind me when he passed away, passed away. Simple truth is I sat for a five-hour interview over two days of events going back 40 years. At the same time I was managing a national crisis," Biden said.

"Their task was to make a decision about whether to move forward with charges in this case. That's their decision to make. That's the counsel's decision to make. That's his job. And they decided not to move forward. For any extraneous commentary, they don't know what they're talking about. It has no place in this report. The bottom line is a matter is now closed," added Biden.

Hur said in his report that "Biden's memory was significantly limited, both during his recorded interviews with the ghostwriter in 2017 and in his interview with our office in 2023.”

The investigators also concluded that it “would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him – by then a former president well into his eighties – of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”