Allies of President Biden joined Sunday morning shows to defend the commander in chief following Special Counsel Robert Hur’s months-long report on classified documents that characterized Biden as an “elderly man with a poor memory.”
“He’s smart. He’s on his game,” Biden campaign co-chair Mitch Landrieu told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “And as Secretary Mayorkas said a minute ago, when you go in to brief the president, you better have your big boy pants on. And this kind of sense that he’s not ready for this job, it’s just a bucket of BS that’s so deep, your boots will get stuck.”
Landrieu and Biden’s personal attorney Robert Bauer joined morning shows on Sunday to defend the president’s mental clarity following Hur’s report. The report, released Thursday, described the president’s memory as “hazy,” “fuzzy,” “faulty,” “poor,” and suggested Biden did not remember when his son Beau Biden died.
The report ultimately decided against criminally charging the president for the possession of classified documents after he served as vice president.
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President Biden answers questions about Israel after speaking about the special counsel’s report at the White House on Feb. 8, 2024. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
“We conclude that no criminal charges are warranted in this matter,” the report, released Thursday, states. “We would reach the same conclusion even if the Department of Justice policy did not foreclose criminal charges against a sitting president.”
Bauer, who appeared on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” described Hur’s report as “shoddy” and riddled with “factual misstatements.” Following the report’s public release, the White House counsel’s office requested Hur revise some of the language in the report.
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“The investigation could have been concluded in two or three months. It went on for over 15 months. And so, along with the legal conclusion comes this flood of characterizations, factual misstatements, pejorative comments about the president that are inconsistent with DOJ policy and norms. And that, as you see over the last 48 hours, have been widely criticized by legal experts. This is not what prosecutors do. It is shoddy work product,” Bauer said Sunday.
This image from Special Council Robert Hur’s investigation released by the Department of Justice on Thursday, Feb. 8, 2024, shows the storage closet inside the Penn Biden Center in March 2021. (U.S. Department of Justice)
Biden held a press conference Thursday evening where he fielded questions from the media regarding his mental clarity, memory and age following Hur’s report. Amid Biden defending his mental state, he confused Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi as the “president of Mexico,” sparking concern stateside as well as abroad. Critics lampooned the president for the gaffe, as some called for the invocation of the 25th Amendment, which stipulates the presidential order of succession if a commander in chief is unable to fulfill their duties, dies, resigns or becomes incapacitated.
Bauer doubled-down throughout his interview Sunday that the Hur report was “shoddy” and “shabby,” and detailed that he was in the room when Biden answered the special counsel’s questions across two days and that the president was “engaged” during the interview and answered to his “best recollection.”
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“I recall from that interview a president who engaged with the questions very directly and gave his best recollection. And in fact, I think was quite helpful to the special counsel,” Bauer said, adding that Hur decided to “cherry pick in a very misleading way” when he wrote the report.
Bauer said Biden “does not” have any issues with his memory, and provided a “vignette from the interview room.”
Robert Bauer, private attorney for President Biden (Scott J. Ferrell/Congressional Quarterly/Getty Images)
“There were a couple of occasions when the special counsel, who had flagged at the beginning that sometimes he asks imprecise questions, asked questions that the president picked apart as a matter of logic. He showed that the questions didn’t have a logical underpinning. Now, everybody in the room recognized that was the case. That showed the president was listening carefully and understood precisely what was wrong with those questions,” Bauer said.
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Landrieu in his remarks Sunday slammed Hur’s “ad hominem attack” within the report that questioned the president’s mental capacity, calling it “egregious.”
White House senior adviser Mitch Landrieu speaks during the daily news briefing at the White House on May 12, 2023. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images )
“This ad hominem attack questions the president’s capacity and I want to speak to that very clearly because I can testify because I’ve been working very closely with this president for the past two years. I’ve been knowing him for 30 years. I have met with him personally. I’ve met with him with two people, five people, 10 people. I have been on trips with him crisscrossing the country, rebuilding America based on this incredible infrastructure bill that was passed. And I’m telling you this guy is tough,” he said.
Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas also joined “Meet the Press” on Sunday, arguing the president is “sharp.”
“The most difficult part about a meeting with President Biden is preparing for it because he is sharp, intensely probing and detail-oriented and focused,” Mayorkas said.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas joined “Meet the Press” on Sunday, arguing the president is “sharp.” (Getty Images)
The secretary also said that he and other Cabinet members have “not at all” considered invoking the 25th Amendment to remove and replace the president.
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“I don’t engage in politics. I’m responsible for governing and following the president’s agenda, which I scrupulously do,” he said.
The White House released a memo Saturday, titled “We don’t blame Republican officials for their desperation to forget the Biden presidency,” which detailed Biden’s successes as president, including helping “secure the release of over 100 of the hostages taken by Hamas,” and how Republicans and Democrats have previously lauded Biden for his mental sharpness.
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“President Biden’s experience, character, and drive have made him the most successful president in modern history, getting the country back on its feet after inheriting a nation in crisis and going on to achieve goals that eluded his predecessors for decades,” the memo reads.
