Special Counsel Robert Hur’s final report on Joe Biden’s willful retention and dissemination of highly classified information is rocking Washington, re-igniting concerns of a dual system of justice while putting the full weight of the government behind the notion that America is currently being served by a president with “diminished faculties.”
Hur’s 388-page report released Thursday may have spared Biden the spectacle of a criminal prosecution similar to that his Justice Department imposed on Donald Trump, but it delivered a devastating blow to the 46th president’s re-election hopes by going out of its way to explain criminal charges weren’t levied in part because jurors might see Biden as a dottering, forgetful old man incapable of criminal intent.
“Mr. Biden will likely present himself to the jury, as he did during his interview with our office, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” Hur wrote in explaining his rational for declining prosecution. “…It would be difficult to convince a jury they should convict him – by then a former president who will be at least well into his eighties – of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”