KEY POINTS
- First lady Jill Biden defended her husband following a special counsel report that said he had memory issues
- Jill Biden wrote an email to campaign donors and defended her husband, saying his age is an “asset”
- The president was described in the special counsel report as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory’
First lady Jill Biden sharply criticized the special counsel for using the death of Joe Biden’s son to suggest the president was having memory issues.
In a strong defense of her husband, Jill Biden said in an email to campaign donors that the family was shattered by the loss of son Beau to cancer in 2015. She also said she couldn’t imagine his death being used to “score political points.”
“We should give everyone grace, and I can’t imagine someone would try to use our son’s death to score political points,” she wrote. “If you’ve experienced a loss like that, you know that you don’t measure it in years — you measure it in grief.”
Special Counsel Robert Hur released a report this week following an investigation into Joe Biden’s mishandling of classified documents. Hur’s report concluded that Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials” after leaving office, but the evidence did not support prosecuting the president.
“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,” Hur wrote.
Hur also noted in the report that Biden’s memory “appeared hazy” and that the president could not mention when his son Beau died of cancer.
“Believe me, like anyone who has lost a child, Beau and his death never leave him,” Jill Biden said in her email to supporters.
“May 30th is a day forever etched on our hearts,” she said about the day Beau Biden died. “It shattered me, it shattered our family … What helped me, and what helped Joe, was to find purpose. That’s what keeps Joe going, serving you and the country we love.”
Hur’s report has fueled voters’ and Democratic concerns about Biden’s ability to complete another term at the White House. Vice President Kamala Harris and the Biden administration defended the president in their attempt to quell concerns about his age.
“The way that the president’s demeanor in that report was characterized could not be more wrong on the facts and (was) clearly politically motivated,” Harris said when asked about the report.
Jill Biden also asserted in her Saturday email that her husband’s age, “with his experience and expertise, is an incredible asset.”
“Joe is 81, that’s true, but he’s 81 doing more in an hour than most people do in a day. Joe has wisdom, empathy, and vision,” Jill Biden said. “His age, with his experience and expertise, is an incredible asset and he proves it every day.”
