An impassioned Joe Biden vigorously responded to a Republican prosecutor’s accusation of faulty memory during a last-minute, occasionally chaotic press conference on Thursday.
The president pushed back against certain aspects of the report released earlier in the day by Justice Department special counsel Robert Hur regarding his handling of classified documents. He became particularly incensed at the suggestion that he couldn’t recall the year his late son, Beau Biden, passed away from brain cancer.
In an unfortunate slip-up, while discussing conflicts in the Middle East, Mr. Biden appeared to mistakenly interchange Mexico with Egypt.
On Friday, Kamala Harris joined the White House’s defense, criticizing the report as “politically motivated” and deeming certain details within it as “gratuitous, inaccurate, and inappropriate.
Mr. Hur’s report ultimately concluded that Mr. Biden would not face charges for allegedly retaining documents after leaving office as Barack Obama’s vice president in January 2017. It noted that these materials included files related to military policy in Afghanistan and handwritten notes on national security, while also suggesting that any criminal charges against Mr. Biden would likely portray him as an “elderly man with a poor memory” to a jury.