Biden's memory

Hur defends assessment of Biden’s memory

The US special investigator Robert Hur has defended his controversial assessments of President Joe Biden's memory. These were "necessary, accurate and fair", he said on Tuesday (local time) before the House Judiciary Committee.

He had neither whitewashed nor "unfairly denigrated" the president. As reported, Hur had ruled in his report on Biden's document affair published at the beginning of February that the president should not be impeached. The reasoning: The 81-year-old was a "well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory" (see video above). "My job was to determine whether the president intentionally retained or disclosed information for national defense," Hur now said. To do this, he had to look at the president's memory and general condition.

Republicans used quotes for themselves
The passages in the report have caused outrage among Biden and his Democratic Party. Republicans, on the other hand, used the quotes to deny Biden, who will run against Trump again in November, the mental capacity to hold office.

Transcripts of Hur's questioning of the US President have since been published. In it, Biden cannot remember the year in which his son Beau died of a brain tumor, but he can remember the day of the week and the month. The politician also asked at one point when Trump was elected president and twice about the dates of his own vice presidency under Barack Obama.

Congressman: "You knew exactly what you were doing"
At the hearing on Tuesday, Democratic MPs sharply criticized the special investigator. He had used his report to "pull the wool over" Biden's eyes and "smear" him, said Congressman Hank Johnson, for example. "You can't fool me into thinking you're naive enough to think your words won't ignite a political firestorm. You are not stupid. You knew exactly what you were doing," said Rep. Adam Schiff.

"Party politics" had no place in his work, Hur replied. Biden's document scandal involved confidential documents from his time as Obama's deputy between 2009 and 2017. The documents were found at the end of 2022 in an office he had previously used in Washington and also in his private home in Wilmington.

Months earlier, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had confiscated hundreds of confidential documents from Trump's private residence at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, which the right-wing populist had taken with him from the White House after the end of his term of office at the beginning of 2021. Trump did not want to return the documents and has been charged as a result.