Biden angrily pushes back at special counsel’s report that questioned his memory, handling of docs

US President Joe Biden delivers remarks at the White House in Washington, D.C. on February 8, 2024. (REUTERS)
Short Url
Updated 09 February 2024
Follow

Biden angrily pushes back at special counsel’s report that questioned his memory, handling of docs

  • President denies improperly sharing classified information and angrily lashed out at Robert Hur for questioning his mental acuity
  • While the report removes legal jeopardy for Biden, it is nonetheless an embarrassment for one who placed competency and experience at the core of his election campaign

WASHINGTON: A special counsel report released Thursday found evidence that President Joe Biden willfully retained and shared highly classified information when he was a private citizen, including about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, but concluded that criminal charges were not warranted.

The report from special counsel Robert Hur resolves a criminal investigation that had shadowed Biden’s presidency for the last year. But its bitingly critical assessment of his handling of sensitive government records and unflattering characterizations of his memory will spark fresh questions about his competency and age that cut at voters’ most deep-seated concerns about his candidacy for re-election.
In remarks at the White House Thursday evening, Biden denied that he improperly shared classified information and angrily lashed out at Hur for questioning his mental acuity, particularly his recollection of the timing of his late son Beau’s death from cancer.
The searing findings will almost certainly blunt his efforts to draw contrast with Donald Trump, Biden’s likely opponent in November’s presidential election, over a criminal indictment charging the former president with illegally hoarding classified records at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and refusing to return them to the government. Despite abundant differences between the cases, Trump immediately seized on the special counsel report to portray himself as a victim of a “two-tiered system of justice.”
Yet even as Hur found evidence that Biden willfully held onto and shared with a ghostwriter highly classified information, the special counsel devoted much of his report to explaining why he did not believe the evidence met the standard for criminal charges, including a high probability that the Justice Department would not be able to prove Biden’s intent beyond a reasonable doubt, citing among other things an advanced age that they said made him forgetful and the possibility of “innocent explanations” for the records that they could not refute.
“I did not share classified information,” Biden insisted. “I did not share it with my ghostwriter.” He added he wasn’t aware how the boxes containing classified documents ended up in his garage.
And in response to Hur’s portrayal of him, Biden insisted to reporters that “My memory is fine,” and said he believes he remains the most qualified person to serve as president.
“How in the hell dare he raise that?” Biden asked, about Hur’s comments regarding his son’s death, saying he didn’t believe it was any of Hur’s business.
Biden’s lawyers blasted the report for what they said were inaccuracies and gratuitous swipes at the president. In a statement, Biden said he was “pleased” Hur had “reached the conclusion I believed all along they would reach — that there would be no charges brought in this case and the matter is now closed.”
He pointedly noted that he had sat for five hours of in-person interviews in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s October attack on Israel, when “I was in the middle of handling an international crisis.”
“I just believed that’s what I owed the American people so they could know no charges would be brought and the matter closed,” Biden said.
The investigation into Biden is separate from special counsel Jack Smith’s inquiry into the handling of classified documents by Trump after Trump left the White House. Smith’s team has charged Trump with illegally retaining top secret records at his Mar-a-Lago home and then obstructing government efforts to get them back. Trump has said he did nothing wrong.
Hur, in his report, said there were “several material distinctions” between the Trump and Biden cases, noting that Trump refused to return classified documents to the government and allegedly obstructed the investigation, while Biden willfully handed them over.
Hur, a former US Attorney in the Trump administration, was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland as special counsel in January 2023 following an initial discovery by Biden staff of classified records in Washington office space. Subsequent property searches by the FBI, all coordinated voluntarily by Biden staff, that turned up additional sensitive documents from his time as vice president and senator.
Hur’s report said many of the documents recovered at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, in parts of Biden’s Delaware home and in his Senate papers at the University of Delaware were retained by “mistake.”
Biden could not have been prosecuted as a sitting president, but Hur’s report states that he would not recommend charges against Biden regardless.
“We would reach the same conclusion even if Department of Justice policy did not foreclose criminal charges against a sitting president,” the report said.
But investigators did find evidence of willful retention and disclosure of a subset of records found in Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware house, including in a garage, office and basement den. The files pertain to a troop surge in Afghanistan during the Obama administration that Biden had vigorously opposed. He kept records that documented his position, including a classified letter to Obama during the 2009 Thanksgiving holiday.
Documents found in a box in Biden’s Delaware garage have classification markings up to the Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information Level and “other materials of great significance to him and that he appears to have personally used and accessed.” Hur, though, wrote that there was a ”shortage of evidence” to prove that Biden placed the documents in the box and knew they were there.
Some of the classified information related to Afghanistan was shared with a ghostwriter with whom he published memoirs in 2007 and 2017. As part of the probe, investigators reviewed a recording of a February 2017 conversation between Biden and his ghostwriter in which Biden can be heard saying that he had “just found all the classified stuff downstairs.”
Prosecutors believe Biden’s comment, made at a time he was renting a home in Virginia, referred to the same documents FBI agents later found in his Delaware house. Though Biden sometimes skipped over presumptively classified material while reading notebook entries to his ghostwriter, the report says, at other times he read aloud classified entries “verbatim.”
The report said there was some evidence to suggest that Biden knew he could not keep classified handwritten notes at home after leaving office, citing his deep familiarity “with the measures taken to safeguard classified information and the need for those measures to prevent harm to national security.” Yet, prosecutors say, he kept notebooks containing classified information in unlocked drawers at home.
“He had strong motivations to do so and to ignore the rules for properly handing the classified information in his notebooks,” the report said. “He consulted the notebooks liberally during hours of discussions with his ghostwriter and viewed them as highly private and valued possessions with which he was unwilling to part.”
While the report removes legal jeopardy for the president, it is nonetheless an embarrassment for Biden, who placed competency and experience at the core of his rationale to voters to send him to the Oval Office. It says that Biden was known to remove and keep classified material from his briefing books for future use and that his staff struggled and sometimes failed to get those records back.
Even so, Hur took pains to note the multiple reasons why prosecutors did not believe they could prove a criminal case beyond a reasonable doubt.
Those include Biden’s “limited memory” both during his 2017 recorded conversations with the ghostwriter and in an interview with investigators last year in which, prosecutors say, he could not immediately remember the years in which he served as vice president. Hur said it was possible Biden could have found those records at his Virginia home in 2017 and then forgotten about them soon after.
“Given Mr. Biden’s limited precision and recall during his interviews with his ghostwriter and with our office, jurors may hesitate to place too much evidentiary weight on a single eight-word utterance to his ghostwriter about finding classified documents in Virginia, in the absence of other, more direct evidence,” the report says
“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,” investigators wrote.
In addition, prosecutors say, Biden could have plausibly believed that the notebooks were his personal property and belonged to him, even if they contained classified information.
In an interview with prosecutors, the report said, Biden was emphatic with investigators that the notebooks were “my property” and that “every president before me has done the exact same thing.”
Special counsels are required under Justice Department regulations to submit confidential reports to the attorney general at the conclusion of their work. Such reports are then typically made public. The dual appointments in the Biden and Trump cases were seen as a way to insulate the Justice Department from claims of bias and conflict by placing the probes in the hands of specially named prosecutors.
Garland has worked assiduously to challenge Republican claims of a politicized Justice Department. He has named special counsels to investigate not only the president but also his son, Hunter, in a separate tax-and-gun prosecution that has resulted in criminal charges.
But in this case, Biden’s personal and White House lawyers strongly objected to the characterizations of Biden in the report and to the fact that so much derogatory information was released about an uncharged subject like the president.
Biden’s personal attorney Bob Bauer accused the special counsel of violating “well-established’ norms and “trashing” the president.
“The special counsel could not refrain from investigative excess, perhaps unsurprising given the intense pressures of the current political environment. Whatever the impact of those pressures on the final report, it flouts department regulations and norms,” he said in a statement.
But a public outcome was basically sealed once Garland appointed a special counsel.
Regulations require special counsels to produce confidential reports to the attorney general at the conclusion of their work. Those documents are then generally made public, even if they contain unflattering assessments of people not criminally charged.


Trump signs ‘big, beautiful’ bill on US Independence Day

Updated 5 sec ago
Follow

Trump signs ‘big, beautiful’ bill on US Independence Day

  • The passage of the unpopular bill caps two weeks of significant wins for Trump

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump signed his flagship tax and spending bill into law Friday, capping a pomp-laden White House Independence Day ceremony featuring a stealth bomber fly-by.
“America is winning, winning, winning like never before,” Trump said at the event where he signed the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” flanked by Republican lawmakers.
The party fell into line and pushed the bill through a reluctant Congress on Thursday, in time for Trump to sign the bill as he had hoped on the Fourth of July holiday marking America’s 249th birthday.
Two B-2 bombers of the type that recently struck Iranian nuclear sites roared over the White House at the start of the ceremony, accompanied by fighter jets on their wingtips.
Pilots who carried out the bombing on Iran were among those invited to the White House event.
The passage of the unpopular bill caps two weeks of significant wins for Trump, including an Iran-Israel ceasefire that was sealed after what he called the “flawless” US air strikes on Iran.
Ever the showman, Trump melded his various victory laps into one piece of political theater at the ceremony marking 249 years of independence from Britain.
The sprawling mega-bill honors many of Trump’s campaign promises: extending tax cuts from his first term, boosting military spending and providing massive new funding for Trump’s migrant deportation drive.
Trump glossed over deep concerns from his own party and voters that it will balloon the national debt, while simultaneously gutting health and welfare support.
“The largest spending cut,” Trump said with First Lady Melania Trump at his side, “and yet you won’t even notice it.”
Trump forced through the “big beautiful bill” despite deep misgivings in the Republican Party — and the vocal opposition of his billionaire former ally, Elon Musk.
It squeezed past a final vote in the House of Representatives 218-214 after Republican Speaker Mike Johnson worked through the night to corral the final group of dissenters.
Trump thanked Johnson at the White House event.
The legislation is the latest in a series of big wins for Trump that also included a Supreme Court ruling last week that curbed lone federal judges from blocking his policies, and a NATO deal to increase spending.
But the bill is expected to pile an extra $3.4 trillion over a decade onto the US deficit.
At the same time it will shrink the federal food assistance program and force through the largest cuts to the Medicaid health insurance scheme for low-income Americans since its 1960s launch.
Up to 17 million people could lose their insurance coverage under the bill, according to some estimates. Scores of rural hospitals are expected to close as a result.
Democrats hope public opposition to the bill will help them flip the House in the 2026 midterm election, pointing to data showing that it represents a huge redistribution of wealth from the poorest Americans to the richest.


US judge briefly pauses deportation of 8 migrants to South Sudan

Updated 04 July 2025
Follow

US judge briefly pauses deportation of 8 migrants to South Sudan

  • US District Judge Randolph Moss in Washington made the ruling at an emergency hearing on July 4
  • The administration has detained the men for six weeks on a military base in Djibouti

WASHINGTON: A federal judge briefly halted the Trump administration on Friday from placing eight migrants on a plane destined for conflict-ridden South Sudan, to give lawyers for the men time to make their argument to a court in Massachusetts.

US District Judge Randolph Moss in Washington made the ruling at an emergency hearing on July 4, when courts are otherwise closed for the Independence Day holiday.

The group of migrants had filed new claims on Thursday after the Supreme Court clarified that a federal judge in Boston could no longer require US Department of Homeland Security to hold them.

The administration has detained the men for six weeks on a military base in Djibouti rather than bring back to the United States.

The order stops the US government from moving the men until 4:30 p.m. Eastern Time. They were scheduled to be removed to South Sudan on a 7 p.m. flight.

The case is the latest development over the legality of the Trump administration’s campaign to deter immigration by shipping migrants to locations other than their countries of origin pursuant to deals with other countries.

A lawyer for the US said during the hearing that court orders halting agreed-upon deportations pose a serious problem for US diplomatic relations and would make foreign countries less likely to accept transfers of migrants in the future. The group of men have been convicted of various crimes, with four of them convicted of murder, the US Department of Homeland Security has said.

South Sudan has long been dangerous even for locals. The US State Department advises citizens not to travel there due to violent crime and armed conflict. The United Nations has said the African country’s political crisis could reignite a brutal civil war that ended in 2018. The eight men, who their lawyers said are from Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Burma, Sudan and Vietnam, argue their deportations to South Sudan would violate the US constitution, which prohibits “cruel and unusual” punishment.

Moss said that he would transfer the case to Massachusetts rather than hear it himself, but remarked that if they proved their allegations about the motives of US authorities, they would likely have a valid claim.

“It seems to me almost self-evident that the United States government cannot take human beings and send them to circumstances in which their physical well-being is at risk simply either to punish them or send a signal to others,” Moss said during the hearing.


Malaysia arrests 36 Bangladeshis over IS support

Updated 04 July 2025
Follow

Malaysia arrests 36 Bangladeshis over IS support

  • “The group attempted to recruit members to fight in Syria or for Daesh,” Khalid said
  • Of those detained by Malaysian authorities, five suspects were subsequently charged for participating in terrorist organizations

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian police said Friday they have arrested 36 Bangladeshi migrant workers suspected of supporting the Daesh group by promoting its ideology and raising funds through social media.

Police inspector-general Mohd Khalid Ismail said the Bangladesh nationals, who had arrived in Malaysia to work in factories, construction sites and petrol stations, were arrested in coordinated operations since April.

“The group attempted to recruit members to fight in Syria or for Daesh,” Khalid said in a televised news conference on Friday.

“They raised funds to be sent to Syria, and also to Bangladesh,” he said, adding that collections were transmitted through e-wallets and international funds transfer services.

Once in control of large swathes of Syria and Iraq, Daesh was territorially defeated in Syria in 2019 largely due to the efforts of Kurdish-led forces supported by an international coalition. It has maintained a presence mainly in the country’s vast desert.

Of those detained by Malaysian authorities, five suspects were subsequently charged for participating in terrorist organizations, spreading extremist ideologies and raising funds for terrorist activities.

Another 16 are still being probed for their support of the militant movement, while 15 more have been issued deportation orders.

“We believe they have between 100 to 150 members in their WhatsApp group,” Khalid said, adding investigations were ongoing.

“They collected an annual membership fee of about $118 (500 Malaysian ringgit) while further donations were made at their own discretion,” the police chief said.

Asked if the militant group had links to Daesh cells in other countries, Khalid said the police were still working with “our counterparts in other countries as well as Interpol... to uncover their terror network.”

Malaysia depends significantly on foreign workers to meet labor demands in the nation’s key manufacturing and agriculture sectors, with tens of thousands of Bangladeshi nationals arriving each year to fill these roles.


Cameroon’s 92-year-old president faces emerging rivals

Updated 04 July 2025
Follow

Cameroon’s 92-year-old president faces emerging rivals

  • The government released a terse statement announcing Tchiroma had been replaced, without mentioning he had resigned

YAOUNDE, Cameroon: At 92, the world’s oldest head of state, Cameroonian President Paul Biya, faces defections by allies-turned-rivals jockeying to replace him in elections that could end his four-plus decades in power.
Biya, who has led Cameroon with an iron fist since 1982, has had two key allies defect back-to-back as the African country heads for elections in October.
First was Employment Minister Issa Tchiroma Bakary, who stepped down and announced on June 26 he was running for president for his party, the Cameroon National Salvation Front.
Two days later, Mnister of State Bello Bouba Maigari, a former prime minister, also jumped in in the presidential race.
Neither defection appears to have fazed the veteran leader.
The government released a terse statement announcing Tchiroma had been replaced, without mentioning he had resigned.
Biya’s camp also downplayed the challenge from Maigari, who leads the government-allied National Union for Democracy and Progress and has been close to the president for nearly three decades.
“Nothing new here,” Fame Ndongo, communications chief for the ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement wrote in a front-page column Monday in the state newspaper, the Cameroon Tribune.
Biya had “long ago decoded the premonitory signs of these departures, which are part of the classic political game in an advanced liberal democracy,” Ndongo said.
By statute, Biya is automatically the ruling party’s presidential candidate, though he has not yet confirmed he will run.
The nonagenarian’s public appearances have grown rare and rumors of poor health are swirling.
Tchiroma and Maigari have challenged Biya before.
Both ran against him in the 1992 election.
Tchiroma had just been released from prison, and Maigari was just returning from exile at the time.
But both men, powerful figures from the country’s politically important, traditionally pro-government north, soon fell in line with Biya.
That has drawn criticism from some.
Northern Cameroon’s people “are rotting in poverty,” said Severin Tchokonte, a professor at the region’s University of Garoua.
“Supporting the regime all this time amounts to betraying those people, who have no water, no electricity, no infrastructure to ensure their minimal well-being,” he said.
Tchiroma has sought to distance himself from Biya’s tainted legacy, drawing a line between “yesterday” and “today.”
“Admittedly, we didn’t manage to lift you from poverty yesterday, but today, if we come together... we can do it,” he told a rally in Garoua in June.
Cameroon’s last presidential election, in 2018, was marred by violence.
Only around 53 percent of registered voters took part.
The ruling CPDM has long relied on alliances with potential rivals to keep it in power.
But Cameroon is in dire economic straits, and there are mounting calls for change, especially on social media.
With many of the country’s 28 million people mired in poverty, there could be a mass protest vote at the polls.
That may not benefit Tchiroma and Maigari, however.
Both face accusations of acting as Biya puppets to divert votes from more hard-line opponents such as Maurice Kamto of the Cameroon Renaissance Movement (CRM) — a charge both men deny.
“Bello and Tchiroma have been with the CPDM a long time. They could be looking to fracture and weaken the opposition to contain the surge of Maurice Kamto and the CRM,” said Tchokonte.
“If the CRM gets votes in the north, that could tip the balance.”
There is a “large, cross-regional” demand for change in Cameroon, said Anicet Ekane, the veteran leader of opposition party Manidem.
“It will be increasingly difficult for (Biya) to count on elites to tell people how to vote and avoid a national movement against the government,” he said.
Biya urged Cameroonians in February to ignore “the sirens of chaos” being sounded by “certain irresponsible individuals.”
“I can assure you my determination to serve you remains intact,” he said last year.

 


Power outage hits the Czech Republic and disrupts Prague public transport

Updated 04 July 2025
Follow

Power outage hits the Czech Republic and disrupts Prague public transport

  • Prague’s entire subway network was inoperative starting at noon
  • “We are facing an extraordinary and unpleasant situation,” Fiala said

PRAGUE: A temporary power outage hit parts of the Czech Republic’s capital and other areas of the country Friday, bringing public transport and trains to a standstill, officials said.

Prague’s entire subway network was inoperative starting at noon, the capital city’s transport authority said, though subway service was restored within half an hour.

Prime Minister Petr Fiala said in a post on X that the outage hit other parts of the country and authorities were dealing with the problem.

“We are facing an extraordinary and unpleasant situation,” Fiala said, adding it was a priority to renew power supplies.

The CEPS power grid operator acknowledged problems in parts of four regions in northern and eastern Czech Republic. It said a fallen electricity line in the northwestern part of the country was identified as a possible cause for the outage.

Officials have ruled out a cyber or terror attack.

Of the eight substations in the grid that were affected, including a major one in Prague, five renewed operations in less than two hours, CEPS said.

Industry and Trade Minister Lukas Vlcek said the cause was likely a “mechanical malfunction.”

Most trams on the right bank of the Vltava River in Prague were halted, while the left bank was not affected. Some trains near Prague and other regions could not operate, causing delays but the situation was gradually getting back to normal.

There were no immediate reports that Václav Havel Airport Prague, the city’s international airport, was hit by the power outage.

In downtown Prague, stores and restaurant that remained open accepted only payments in cash.