George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said Thursday that factors that precluded recommending charges against President Joe Biden could cause problems for his reelection.
Special counsel Robert Hur’s report released on Thursday found President Joe Biden deliberately kept classified documents but declined to charge him. Hur noted Biden reportedly had forgotten the death of his son, former Democratic Attorney General of Delaware Beau Biden, as well as when he served as vice president, describing the president as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” which Turley said could pose problems for Biden’s reelection bid.
“The question is, what would have happened if President Biden could answer these questions?” Turley told “The Story” guest host Trace Gallagher. “Since they determined that he willfully retained these documents, what would have happened if his memory was better? The answer is it might have been much worse for him in terms of a criminal charge. Some of these documents reportedly go back to when he was a senator. Those documents had to have been removed from SCIFs. You don’t do that by accident.”
Turley also noted that the report’s references to Biden’s memory issues could be a political problem for the president as he likely campaigns against former President Donald Trump, the GOP presidential frontrunner.
“It will be interesting to see the pivot, Trace, for what it was used as an effective criminal defense and what will now have to be made in terms of a call for reelection,” Turley said. “It certainly helped him a great deal to say, you know, I just don’t remember, I’m rather elderly and I can’t even remember the year that I stopped being vice president. To pivot on that point in this campaign is going to be something really to behold. Now, he has to argue that no, that’s not true, I’m as sharp as a tack. So the disconnect may be somewhat glaring for voters.”
Biden faces questions about his age, with 77% of voters in an August 2023 AP/NORC poll saying he is too old to serve effectively as president.
Biden claimed Wednesday to have spoken with former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl about the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, even though Kohl died in 2017, three days after he claimed Sunday he spoke with former French President Francois Mitterrand, who passed away in 1996.
Biden also asked for Republican Rep. Jackie Walorski of Indiana, who was killed along with two staffers in an August 2022 motor vehicle accident, during a conference on hunger.
Biden has suffered multiple falls during his term in office, including one at the Air Force Academy on June 1, falling down while on his bike in June 2022 and stumbling on the steps of Air Force One on two occasions.