Former Attorney General Eric Holder went after a recently released special counsel report on President Biden’s retention of classified documents Friday.
“Special Counsel Hur report on Biden classified documents issues contains way too many gratuitous remarks and is flatly inconsistent with longstanding [Department of Justice] traditions,” Holder said Friday in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Holder, who was attorney general in the Obama administration, said if the report had been “subject to a normal [Department of Justice] review these remarks would undoubtedly have been excised.”
The report from special counsel Robert Hur, released Thursday, concluded no charges should be brought against the president, but it noted Biden had problems with memory and recall.
“We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” Hur wrote.
“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.”
Biden hit back at the report in a fiery press conference Thursday night, defending his memory and mental capability.
“My memory’s fine. … Take a look at what I’ve done since I became president. … How did that happen? I guess I just forgot what was going on,” he said.
The president also specifically pushed back against Hur’s comments about how he could be perceived by a jury.
“I’m well-meaning and I’m an elderly man and I know what the hell I’m doing. I’ve been president; I put this country back on its feet. I don’t need his recommendation,” Biden said.