Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor and current Professor of Public Policy at the University of California-Berkeley, commented on yesterday's report by Special Counsel Robert Hur on President Biden's mishandling of classified documents, and Hur's seemingly gratuitous comment that Biden's memory was poor. What apparently triggered Biden's anger specifically was Hur's comment that Biden had trouble remembering the date when his son Beau passed away. Reich's observations:
1) Special counsel Hur has no professional background or experience diagnosing age-related memory loss. In fact, he has no medical background at all. His conclusion that Biden has a “poor memory” is entirely subjective, based on Hur’s own guess about how a jury would respond to Biden.
2) Some memory loss naturally comes with aging, and both Biden (age 81) and his likely Republican opponent, Donald Trump (age 77) have demonstrated memory loss as well as confusion. (Trump recently confused Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi, for example.)
3) For the purposes of electing the next president, the relevant question isn’t a candidate’s memory. It’s his knowledge, temperament, and judgment. We have no reason to doubt these attributes in Biden. He has been the adult in the room. But the likely Republican nominee notably lacks all these qualities. To the contrary, Trump has consistently and repeatedly demonstrated willful ignorance, a sociopathic temperament, and the judgment of a five-year-old. Trump has been indicted on 91 criminal counts.
4) Hur is a former Trump Justice Department official. I don’t know about you, but I can’t help wonder why Hur thought it useful to predict that a jury would likely find Biden to be an “elderly man with a poor memory” — unless, perhaps, Hur thought it politically useful. Could it possibly be that Hur — whom Trump appointed to the Justice Department, who was a top adviser to Trump’s then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and whom Trump then nominated to be U.S. attorney for Maryland — might have known he would set off a political bombshell? How could he not have known?
5) The two cases — Trump retaining classified documents and Biden retaining them — are utterly different. Trump refused to turn over documents that had been subpoenaed and undertook other efforts to thwart investigators. Biden, on the other hand, did not willfully retain papers; he cooperated with investigators the moment the documents were found. (our emphasis)
In retrospect, it would have been better for the White House to issue a statement that captured the points Biden wanted to make and leave it at that, rather that face a howling press corps last night as he did, which seemed to make matters worse. In those situations, the howling press corps has the advantage. Live and learn.
(photo: Biden at last night's press conference. AP Photo / Evan Vucci)
