Joe Biden’s lawyer called special counsel Robert Hur’s report commenting in part on the president’s age and health “off the rails” and “shabby” on Sunday.
An angry and animated Joe Biden previously hit back at the Republican prosecutor’s claim that his memory is faulty during a last-minute and at-times chaotic press conference on Thursday.
The president hit out at parts of the report released earlier in the day by Justice Department special counsel Robert Hur into his handling of classified documents and became infuriated at a suggestion that he did not remember the year his late son, Beau Biden, died from brain cancer.
On Friday, Kamala Harris joined the White House fight back, slamming the report as “politically motivated”, and saying she found details in it “gratuitous, inaccurate and inappropriate”.
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”.
Mr Hur’s report concluded that Mr Biden will not face charges for “willfully” holding onto documents after he left office as Barack Obama’s vice president in January 2017.
The report, which was delivered to Congress after many months of investigation and preparation, recommended no criminal charges for the incumbent president, even were he not protected by immunity from prosecution due to his current stature.
However, 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.
It stated that the materials included files on military policy in Afghanistan and handwritten notes on national security, also suggesting that Mr Biden would look like an “elderly man with a poor memory” to a jury if he were to be hit with criminal charges.