Joe Biden forgot when he was vice president and when his son Beau died, special counsel report says

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Perhaps the biggest takeaway from Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report is that President Joe Biden is struggling with memory issues.

Hur’s report, while not recommending any criminal charges over Biden’s handling of classified documents, included seemingly grave warnings about the president’s mental acuity.

During a portion dealing with classified documents pertaining to Afghanistan, the report noted that the 81-year-old president “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.”

“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,” the report added.

Furthermore, the report stated that during an interview with investigators, Biden could not recall the dates of his 2009-2017 vice presidency, or recall that his son Beau died in May 2015.

“When did I stop being Vice President?” said Biden at one point, according to the report. “In 2009, am I still Vice President?”

The relevant portion of Hur’s report. Department of Justice

In a statement, White House counsel Richard Sauber disputed portions of the report.

“We disagree with a number of inaccurate and inappropriate comments in the Special Counsel’s report,” said Sauber. “Nonetheless, the most important decision the Special Counsel made—that no charges are warranted—is firmly based on the facts and evidence.”

In a letter to the special counsel included at the end of the report, Sauber and Bob Bauer, Biden’s personal lawyer, expanded on that critique.

“The President’s inability to recall dates or details of events that happened years ago is neither surprising nor unusual,” the duo wrote, noting that many questions dealt with “the particulars of staff work to pack, ship, and store materials and furniture in the course of moves between residences.”

They also argued that the special counsel treated Biden’s memory lapses differently than that of one of his lawyers.

“Unlike your treatment of President Biden, your report accepts other witnesses’ memory loss as completely understandable given the passage of time,” they wrote.

Biden has suffered several public memory lapses during his presidency, particularly in recent weeks.

At a campaign event in New York on Wednesday, Biden confused former German Chancellor Angela Merkel with her predecessor, who has since died. And days before that, he confused French President Emmanuel Macron with Francois Mitterrand, who died in 1996.

Over the summer, Biden confused Ukraine with Iraq twice in a 24-hour period.