Tag Archive for: robert hur

JOE BIDEN WRAPPED: How Delaware’s Favorite Son Fared During His Final Year In Office

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President Joe Biden had an eventful last year in office, from losing track of his Defense Secretary to breaking one last promise and pardoning his son, all while dropping out of the presidential race and saying his final goodbye to the Oval Office.

Biden’s approval rating hit an all-time low, falling to 34% just two weeks before the end of the year. Biden battled low approval ratings before dropping out of the presidential race, but still managed to fight off a special counsel report, make it to the first debate, and overshadow Vice President Kamala Harris’s closing arguments before her loss.

Biden’s 2024 began with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin going MIA as he and the Pentagon forgot to notify the White House about his hospitalization for several days. Austin was hospitalized at Walter Reed Hospital on Jan. 1 and neither his stay, nor his time in the intensive care unit, was reported to the White House. Despite the communication break down, Biden never considered firing Austin, a White House official previously confirmed to the Daily Caller.

Once the Austin scandal died down, ran into Special Counsel Robert Hur. Hur declined to pursue criminal charges against the president, despite finding that Biden willfully retained classified documents, because a jury might see Biden as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

Hur noted in his report that during their five hour interview, he forgot when his term as vice president began and ended and when his son Beau had died. The president held an angry press conference responding to the report and blaming his staff for the handling of the classified documents.

“How bad is your memory?” Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy asked the president.

“My memory is so bad I let you speak,” Biden snapped. “My memory is fine. Take a look at what I’ve done since I’ve become president.”

Whatever chance the White House had of dispelling concerns about Biden’s fitness evaporated when he took the debate stage. Facing off against now-President-elect Donald Trump, Biden mumbled and stumbled through answers and lit a firestorm amid his party. Suddenly, Biden and his campaign staff were facing calls from within the Democratic party for the president to drop out of the race.

The concerns within the party became too much for the campaign to weather and Biden announced via Twitter, about a month after the debate, that he was calling it quits.

“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President. And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as president for the remainder of my term,” Biden wrote in a twitter statement. Days later he would show his face for the first time since dropping out and vaguely address the nation about his departure. 

Biden didn’t fade from the spotlight quite yet. As Harris addressed her supporters just feet away from the White House for her closing argument, Biden made sure to steal the attention, calling Trump supporters “garbage.”

While on a get-out-the-vote call, Biden started to discuss a joke made by comic Tony Hinchcliffe during a Trump rally, saying that the only garbage “floating out there is his supporters.” The White House responded to outrage about the president’s remarks by posting a written transcript of his comments, modifying “supporters” to “supporter’s,” falsely claiming that Biden was addressing Hinchcliffe, not Trump voters.

It was later revealed that the White House stenographers put in their official transcript that Biden had said “supporters,” but the press office had decided to release a modified transcript after they “conferred with the president,” according to an email obtained by The Associated Press.

After months of insisting he would not do so, Biden rounded out 2024 by pardoning his son.  A Delaware jury convicted Hunter Biden in June for knowingly possessing a gun while suffering from a drug addiction and making false statements on the purchase document. The president absolved his son of his crimes, arguing that he was targeted by his own Department of Justice because of his identity.

“For my entire career I have followed a simple principle: just tell the American people the truth. They’ll be fair-minded,” the president wrote.

“Here’s the truth: I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice — and once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further. I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision.”

AUTHOR

Reagan Reese

White House correspondent. Follow Reagan on Twitter.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Biden Lied About Beau Exchange With Robert Hur During Angry Press Conference, Transcript Confirms

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President Joe Biden lied about an exchange with special counsel Robert Hur regarding his son Beau during an angry press conference following the release of Hur’s report last month, a transcript of their five-hour interview confirms.

Hur’s report detailing the president’s handling of classified documents made several notes about Biden’s memory, including that he forgot the date of his son’s death and when his vice presidency began and ended. Biden held an unexpected press conference a few hours after the release of the report, criticizing Hur for questioning his late son’s death. The president, however, was the one who raised the date of his son’s death, according to the transcript the Daily Caller obtained .

Rather than pushing Biden about the date of Beau Biden’s death, Hur questioned the president on where work-related papers were being kept following the conclusion of his vice presidency in January of 2017.

“Well, um … I, I, I, I, I don’t know. This is, what, 2017, 2018, that area?” Biden began.

“Yes, sir,” Hur responded.

“Remember, in this time frame, my son is — either been deployed or is dying, and, and so it was — and by the way, there were still a lot of people at the time when I got out of the Senate that were encouraging me to run in this period, except the president. I’m not — and not a mean thing to say. He just thought that she had a better shot of winning the presidency than I did,” Biden began. “And so I hadn’t, I hadn’t, at this point — even though I’m at Penn, I hadn’t walked away from the idea that I may run for office again. But if I ran again, I’d be running for president. And, and so what was happening, though — what month did Beau die? Oh, God, May 30 —”

“2015,” Rachel Cotton, a White House lawyer, interjected.

“2015,” an unidentified male confirmed.

“Was it 2015 he had died?” Biden asked.

“It was May of 2015,” an unidentified male reiterated.

“It was 2015,” Biden responded.

“Or — I’m not sure of the month, sir, but I think that was the year,” Robert Bauer, the president’s personal lawyer, weighed in.

During his post-release press conference, Biden blasted Hur for asking him about his son’s death, despite the report revealing that did not happen. “How in the hell dare he raise that?” Biden told reporters. “Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself, it wasn’t any of their damn business.”

During the Hur interview, the president went on to ask when former President Donald Trump was elected, and several speakers correct the president when he asks if it was November of 2017. The unidentified speakers tell the president that he left the vice presidency in January of 2017, which is why the year is coming up.

“OK, yeah,” Biden confirms. “And in 2017, Beau had passed and — this is personal …” the president continues, appearing to forget the year of his late son’s death again.

In his report, Hur noted that Biden willfully kept classified documents, but declined to pursue charges. The special counsel justified his decision by citing the memory lapses and adding that the jury might see Biden as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

The White House rebuked Hur, calling the report “flatly wrong,” “inappropriate” and “politically motivated.” The special counsel is now set to testify in front of Congress on Tuesday about his investigation.

The transcript provides new insight into a number of key moments from Biden’s interview with Hur beyond the Beau and vice presidential exchanges.

Biden repeatedly throws his own staff under the bus, as he did during the post-report press conference, failing to take personal ownership for the mishandling of classified documents.

“I don’t want to hold them responsible or get them in trouble, but I believe they were the ones who were packing up … and were deciding, you know, where, where things were going, to the best of my knowledge,” Biden said of his staff. He added he had “no goddamn idea” what was in one set of files shipped to his house.

The president claimed to not recall or struggled to recount certain details he was asked about on a number of occasions. Biden said he had no memory of a comment he made about a 2009 memo to then-President Barack Obama about surging troops to Afghanistan. Biden had told the ghostwriter for his memoir that he found the memo amongst classified documents downstairs.

“It has nothing to do with the investigation, you’ll understand why this is sensitive,” Biden said. “The president thought that I knew a lot more about Afghanistan than he did, and other members of the administration.”

Biden added that the memo was handwritten because it would have taken him five times as long to type it. In a separate exchange, Biden remarked that Obama didn’t want him to run for president in 2016 because he believed that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had a better chance of winning the election.

Despite claiming that his staff was ultimately responsible for moving around classified documents and moving items in and out of his residence, Biden displayed a highly-detailed knowledge of the architecture of his home and said he participated in moving his belongings in and out as well.

“I’m a frustrated architect,” Biden said, while explaining that his home had seven different types of molding. “In order to try to convince me not to run for Senate for the 19th time, my wife said, ‘Look, you don’t run, I’ll pay for architectural school for you.”

At one point, Hur remarked that Biden had “a photographic understanding and, and recall of the house.”

Biden also stated “I remember moving boxes, literally physically moving them, with help, one side to the other so I could get the Corvette in that garage on the left.”

At various times during the interview, Hur had to implore Biden to answer his questions rather than go off on unrelated tangents. Biden once blew past Hur’s attempt to re-focus the interview to explain to him how the torque on electric cars worked, complete with “car noises.”

“You step your foot on the accelerator all the way down until it gets about six, seven grand,” Biden said. “Then all the sudden it will say ‘launch.’ All you do is take your foot off the brake.”

Biden then made a car engine sound, according to the transcript.

The president also digressed about solar panels in Angola, investigators finding swimsuit photos of his wife amongst his documents and the archery skills he displayed on a trip to Mongolia, according to the transcript.

Nevertheless, the White House reacted defiantly to the release of the transcript Tuesday morning. It was delivered to Congress by the Department of Justice just hours before Hur was slated to testify about his findings.

“You can’t make this up. On page 72 of the transcript, it is not President Biden who admits to “misremembering” things from just moments earlier. It’s the Special Counsel himself,” White House spokesperson Ian Sams tweeted, after retweeting a number of other posts defending the president from Hur’s claims about his memory.

AUTHOR

REAGAN REESE

White House correspondent. Follow Reagan on Twitter.

RELATED ARTICLE: FLASHBACK: Democrats Had No Problem With Robert Hur Until He Became A Thorn For Joe Biden

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Biden Throws Staff Under The Bus, Lashes Out At Reporters In Rare Press Conference After Special Counsel Report

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President Joe Biden gave a rare, unexpected press conference Thursday night in which he blamed his staff for mishandling classified documents and snapped at reporters’ questions.

The president delivered remarks Thursday evening in response to a special counsel report on his handling of classified documents. Biden’s address comes after Special Counsel Robert Hur concluded his investigation by declining to press charges despite stating that Biden had, in fact, mishandled classified documents.

Biden pinned the findings on his staff. “I take responsibility for not having seen exactly what my staff was doing,” he said.

“Things that appeared in my garage, things that came out of my home, things that were moved, were moved not by me, but my staff, but my staff,” he continued.

The report noted that during an interview with Biden, he forgot when his term as vice president began and ended and when his son Beau had died. The president shot down claims that he had forgotten his son’s death and responded to language in the report that characterized him as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

“I don’t need anyone to remind me when he passed away,” Biden said.

Once Biden opened up the press conference to questions, reporters began peppering him with inquiries about his memory and mental acuity, which had become a major point of debate after Hur’s report was released. Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy asked Biden, “How bad is your memory?”

“My memory is so bad I let you speak,” Biden said. “My memory is fine. Take a look at what I’ve done since I’ve become president.”

Biden reached his most heated when another reporter began to ask a question about the American people’s concerns about his mental state, a premise which is backed by vast amounts of polling.

“That is your judgement! That is your judgement! That is not the judgement of the press!” Biden shouted back at her. He then mistakenly referred to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as the President of Mexico.

Documents relating to U.S. foreign policy in Afghanistan and handwritten notebook entries concerning sensitive national security matters were recovered by FBI agents at Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, estate. Hur cited the DOJ policy surrounding prosecuting a president to justify his decision not to press charges against Biden.

The classified documents span from Biden’s career in the Senate all the way to his vice presidency with former President Barack Obama. The handwritten notes Biden took during the Obama administration frequently covered materials from daily briefings and National Security Council meetings.

AUTHOR

REAGAN REESE

White House correspondent. Follow Reagan on Twitter.

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Nearly 90% Of Americans Think Biden Is ‘Too Old’ To Serve Another Term As President: POLL

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An overwhelming majority of Americans believe President Joe Biden is “too old” to serve another term following the release of a special counsel report that described him as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” a Sunday poll found.

Special counsel Robert Hur’s report declined to pursue criminal charges against Biden in the classified documents investigation, but detailed how interviewers questioned the president’s mental capacity. An ABC News/Ipsos survey found that 86% of Americans believe Biden is “too old” ahead of the 2024 election, compared to 62% who said the same of former President Donald Trump.

Biden is already the oldest president in U.S. history, and would be 86-years-old by the end of a potential second term. While the former president is currently 77, only 3% of Americans viewed “only Trump” as “too old” for another term compared to 27% who said the same of Biden, according to the poll.

Most Americans view both men as “too old” for reelection at 59%, and 11% didn’t think either were, the poll found.

Hur’s report found that the president willfully withheld classified documents from his time as vice president related to important national security matters. The special counsel recalled moments where Biden failed to remember when his son, Beau, passed away, as well as the duration of his vice presidency.

“Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. 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,” the report reads.

Biden held a press conference just hours after the report was released in an attempt to quell concerns over his mental fitness, during which he mixed up the leaders of Mexico and Egypt, and contradicted key components of the special counsel’s findings.

The White House pointed the Daily Caller News Foundation toward a Saturday memo which listed several individuals who have refuted concerns over Biden’s age and mental fitness, including the father of freed Hamas hostage Liat Beinin Atzili, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley, former House Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy and GOP Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah.

“President Biden’s experience, character, and drive have made him the most successful president in modern history, getting the country back on its feet after inheriting a nation in crisis and going on to achieve goals that eluded his predecessors for decades,” the memo reads. “And this undeniable record speaks to why it’s no surprise that Republican officials’ continue their desperate – and inadvertently self-undermining – age attacks after many years of failure: they’re afraid of Joe Biden.”

The president is currently trailing Trump, who is the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination, by roughly two points in the RealClearPolitics average for a potential 2024 head-to-head matchup. Trump is also leading Biden in several crucial battleground states, including Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and Michigan.

The ABC News/Ipsos poll surveyed 528 adults nationwide from Feb. 9 to Feb. 10 with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5%.

Biden’s campaign did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

AUTHOR

MARY LOU MASTERS

Contributor.

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