by The White House on Friday called the special counsel’s report on President Biden’s handling of classified material politically motivated, intensifying its attempts to discredit a document that characterized the president as elderly and forgetful.
Vice President Kamala Harris suggested the report was more of a political attack than an impartial legal document. Ian Sams, a spokesman for the White House Counsel’s Office, said the report was “inappropriate” and “troubling.”
The remarks are part of an effort to reject the report by special counsel Robert K. Hur, who was appointed by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland to investigate how classified material from Biden’s time as vice president had ended up in his garage and a office in Washington.
The report, which was released Thursday, found that “criminal charges are not warranted,” a conclusion that was immediately overshadowed by the characterization of the president’s memory. The report said Biden, 81, was a “well-intentioned old man with a poor memory” and had “diminished faculties with advancing age.”
The report forced the White House to take immediate steps to control the damage, and the president held a quickly arranged press conference to rebut its conclusions about his mental acuity.
“My memory is fine,” said Biden, who for years has fought the perception that he is a diminished figure.
On Friday, Harris described the report as “politically motivated.”
“The way the president’s conduct was characterized in that report could not be more factually inaccurate and clearly politically motivated,” Harris said in response to questions from reporters at the White House.
He also said that Biden had sat down for in-person interviews with the special counsel’s office just one day after the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7.
“It was an intense moment for the commander in chief of the United States of America,” Harris said. “He was at the forefront of everything, coordinating and directing the leaders who are in charge of the national security of the United States.”
