President Joe Biden’s personal attorney said Sunday he went to both the special counsel and the attorney general to register concerns over what he viewed to be pejorative and unnecessary digs at the president’s memory.
“This is a report that went off the rails,” Bob Bauer said on CBS’ Face the Nation Sunday. “It’s a shabby work product.”
The special counsel was investigating whether the president mishandled classified documents during his previous positions as vice president and senator, and found this week that no criminal charges were warranted.
But in building his argument for why no charges were necessary, Special Counsel Robert Hur, who was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland, detailed in part that Biden’s defense of any potential charges could possibly be that: “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.”
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And then he went on to cite examples where investigators said the president’s memory lapsed, including over when his older son Beau had died.
Democrats are now answering the widespread questions about the 81-year-old president’s age and readiness by affirming that Biden is capable of being commander in chief and trying to discredit people who portray him feeble.
Bauer, who is married to Biden’s top White House aide Anita Dunn, said he raised concerns over the inclusion of these details to both Hur and Garland, which he viewed to be a violation of the Justice Department norms that essentially work to avoid prejudicing the public against people who are not charged with a crime.
Former Trump Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein defended the report on CNN’ “State of the Union” Sunday.
“When you conduct a criminal investigation, some of the information that you uncover and some things that you evaluate don’t necessarily put the subject in a favorable light.
“It’s unfortunate that the special counsel process results in public reports that expose things that otherwise would remain sealed in Department of Justice files.”
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