Too senile to charge: How dementia apparently gets Joe Biden off the hook
“Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.”
Special counsel Robert Hur, seen here in 2019, was appointed by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate Biden's handling of documents. (Photo: Michael A. McCoy/Reuters)
“Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.”
That is first sentence in the second paragraph of Special Counsel Robert Hur, asked with investigating the improper possession and storage of classified documents by Joe Biden. The first paragraph cites the primary reason Biden won’t be charged: He is the sitting president.
Hur wrote in that first paragraph he would not recommend prosecution, “even if Department of Justice policy did not foreclose criminal charges against a sitting president.
It was not the only reason Hur chose not to prosecute. He believes Biden willfully took into his possession and kept documents bearing “Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information” markings — the highest level of classified information. Hur also believes he would present to a jury as a “well-meaning, sympathetic elderly man with a poor memory.” The jury, he concluded, would want to find reasonable doubt on which to acquit.
That determination represents an ironic dilemma for Attorney General Merrick Garland. Another special counsel, Jack Smith, is vigorously pursuing former President Donald Trump on similar charges, even though those documents also were possessed while Trump was in office. Even the most vehement anti-Trumper will consider at some point that the Trump prosecution is malicious, political and a miscarriage of justice.
Even so, it is highly unlikely Garland would move to end Smith’s prosecution. Such is the fear the administration has of Donald Trump.
The special counsel report released Thursday paints the 81-year-old president as suffering from mental decline. And it points to several examples from Biden's hours-long interviews with investigators. (Photo: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
Of greater concern is the cognitive decline Hur noted during five hours of interviews with Biden on October 8 and 9 last year. Hur cited Mark Zwonitzer, worked with Biden on his two memoirs, “Promises to Keep” (2007) and “Promise Me, Dad.” (2017) Biden’s memory seemed significantly impaired in recordings made for the second book.
Hur’s report stated that Biden's recorded conversations with Zwonitzer from 2017 are often painfully slow, with Biden struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries. One passage in the 345-page report is particularly concerning.
“In his interview with our office, Mr. Biden's memory was worse. He did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended ("if it was 2013 - when did I stop being Vice President?"), and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began ("in 2009, am I still Vice President?"). He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died. And his memory appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him. Among other things, he mistakenly said he "had a real difference" of opinion with General Karl Eikenberry, when, in fact, Eikenberry was an ally whom Mr. Biden cited approvingly in his Thanksgiving memo to President Obama.”
With his mental acuity in question, the Biden White House immediately hit back. First issuing a statement slamming the language as ”highly prejudicial” in describing what Biden’s people called a “commonplace occurrence among witnesses” — a lack of recall of years-old events — the staff quickly decided to put Biden in front of cameras to slam Hur’s report. That appearance did nothing to allay fear and doubt among liberals who saw their favorite media sources tout the negatives in the report and call into question, for the first time, Biden’s ability to do his job.
Then French president François Mitterrand and then German chancellor Helmut Kohl during a visit to Verdun in 1984. Biden claimed to have spoken to both of them in recent years, though both are dead. (Photo: AP File)
Hur’s experience with Biden underscores a couple incidents over the last week as indicators that Biden is getting worse. He told a crowd in Las Vegas on Sunday that he recently met with Francois Mitterrand, the French president who has been dead for nearly 30 years. Wednesday at a New York campaign event, Biden claimed he spoke with the late German Chancellor Helmut Kohl in 2021. Kohl died in 2017.
Hur’s pronouncement in summarizing his reasoning for not charging Biden included the definitive statement the first-term chief executive suffers from “diminished capacity.” It can’t be stated any more clearly than that.
Leftist media, essentially the propaganda arm of the White House under Biden, quickly took note. A Washington Post headline late Thursday bluntly stated, “Special counsel report paints scathing picture of Biden’s memory.” The AP said simply, “Special counsel alleged Biden couldn’t recall personal milestones.” NBC called the report “a nightmare” for Biden.
What are Democrat options at this point?
The party can simply continue as they are now, letting a man most people firmly believe is, at the very least, suffering from “diminished faculties.” That may be the likely course of action, as Reuters analysis says the Democrats have not backup plan should Biden falter. The Special Counsel report was the beginning of what is likely Biden’s fall from the presidency.
Two candidates — Rep. Dean Philips (D-MN) and Marianne Williamson, a Houston-based author and political activist — challenged Biden for the party’s nomination. Wednesday, Williamson dropped out. It is unlikely Philips can be the go-to should Biden quit the campaign or step down from office.
Sen. Cory Booker (R-NJ) is a possibility to replace Biden at the top of the Democrat ticket, though Govs. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) and Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) are more often named as potential candidates. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty News)
Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) could be a surprise entry. He ran for president in 2020, hence he has an interest in serving. Thee is even a Cory Booker for President 2024 website, though it has a disclaimer stating Booker does not endorse it’s existence.
Both Gov. Gavin Newsom (R-CA) and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D.MI) have said they have no interest in challenging Biden for the nomination. Both have often appeared to be running shadow campaigns nonetheless. Not challenging and being willing to run are two different things. If Biden steps aside, they both appear poised to enter the race.
Biden himself may not be thinking about another four-year term, but rather, making it to and through the election, after which he can step aside in favor of the vice president. Given Kamala Harris’ favorability rating, this may be the compromise Democrats are considering, pivoting to Booker, Newsom, or Whitmer as his running mate. This could be a plausible path.
You’re probably saying to yourself, “But isn’t Michelle Obama going to run? Megyn Kelly said so.”
Donald Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) have added to that speculation with comments they made during the lead-up to Iowa and New Hampshire. Ted Cruz boosted the popular theory when he told Sean Hannity last September, “I think the odds are very significant that next summer at the Democrat National Convention that the Democrat Party will jettison Joe Biden and will throw him off the ticket, and they will parachute in instead, Michelle Obama to be their candidate.”
It’s something we routinely hear, too, from friends and acquaintances both inside and outside the political and media business. After yesterday, no one we’ve talked to this morning thinks Biden is going to be the nominee. But does that mean Michelle Obama steps in?
Former First Lady Michelle Obama is the subject of speculation as a replacement for Biden, though we believe her distaste for politics and her happiness with her current life precludes her from entering the race against Trump. (Photo: Dan Foster/The Hill)
Obama is highly popular among Democrats, a major cultural figure and a talented communicator. Outside the question of whether she’d want to do it, she has never run for anything, and it’s quite possible that she’s not actually a skilled political candidate. In fact, she hates politics. Doing politics effectively is a big prerequisite for running for president.
She didn’t want her husband to run for the state Senate. She didn’t want him to run for U.S. Senate. She didn’t want him to run for president. She’s not a political animal.
To be sure, since her husband departed the White House in early 2017, Michelle Obama has remained a deeply popular, almost cultlike figure, particularly on the left. That admiration sparked rumors in 2020. It was thought somehow or another, Biden was going to be pushed aside by Barack Obama, Andrew Cuomo was going to be the Democratic candidate, and his running mate was going to be Michelle Obama, But she has made abundantly clear then and now, she loves the life she’s got. She won’t come off the bench to run.
Though independents and moderate Democrats have told pollsters they would prefer neither Biden nor Trump as their choices, the situation is far riskier for the Democrats than the Republicans. That is especially true now that Robert Hur has exposed Biden’s greatly diminished cognitive function in his report.
His impairment is real. The situation is incredibly simple: If a seasoned federal prosecutor believes he is incompetent to stand trial, he is incompetent to remain in the presidency. We would urge his cabinet to invoke Article 4 of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment declaring Biden “is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” Congress must then meet to affirm, by a two-thirds majority in both houses, that assessment, though the Vice President immediately assumes his duties as Acting President.
After his volatile media briefing trying to defend his mental capacity and his age Thursday night, it is apparent change is necessary. Either Biden must admit his is unable to carry out the duties of his office, or his cabinet must make that declaration for him.
The question is no longer if, but when.
We The People is a conservative political organization founded by Mike Nichols. Our purpose is to cut through the nonsense presented as “news” by other media and speak directly to the truth.