Special Counsel Robert K. Hur has been even more unfair to President Biden than we originally knew.
Last month, when Mr. It was sharply criticized for going beyond the scope of official commentary.
We now have a transcript of the interview between the president and Mr. Xu, and surprisingly, it's even worse. It turns out that the special counsel wrongly exaggerated allegations that Biden had memory loss. He consistently adopted interpretations that were as uncharitable and harmful to Biden as possible.
Free is bad enough. This was unfair and misleading.
This is not to say that Mr. Biden's performance was perfect, or even close to it. He's always had a tendency to mix up facts, and it's definitely gotten worse as he's gotten older. After the release of the Hur report, Biden criticized the special counsel for bringing up the painful topic of his son Beau's death. “How on earth could he say something like that?” the President asked. “Frankly, when I was asked that question, I thought to myself, it's none of their business.”
In fact, records show Biden was the first to mention the timing of Beau's death.
Follow this author Ruth Marcus Opinions
“So, what was going on? What month did Beau die? Oh, God, May 30th?”
Two aides talk about 2015.
And according to the record:
PRESIDENT BIDEN: He died in 2015?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE Speaker: It was May 2015.
Compare this with the damning description in Mr. Xu's report. “He couldn't remember when his son Beau died, even within a few years.”
In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, Hsu defended his actions. “My assessment in the report on the relevance of presidential memory was necessary, accurate and fair,” he said. “I did not tarnish my account or unfairly disparage the president.”
Well, the characterization “even within a few years” seems unfair to me.
This is not the only example. Ho's report also noted that Biden “appeared to have a vague memory when describing the Afghanistan debate, which was once very important to him.” Among other things, he mistakenly said he had a “difference of opinion'' with General Carl Eikenberry, when in fact Mr. Ikenberry was an ally whom Mr. Biden cited positively in his Thanksgiving memo to President Biden. Met. ”
But Biden's entire reference to Eikenberry, who was the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan in 2009 when then-Vice President Biden was lobbying President Barack Obama not to send more troops to Afghanistan. , presents a less definitive and less reprehensible image of Mr. Biden. memory.
Eikenberry first appears during a discussion about troop surges. Biden said, “Mr. Obama knew that I had real differences, especially when it came to major foreign policy types, whether it was Eikenberry or not, one way or the other.” said. Was Biden just saying Eikenberry when he was thinking of someone else, or did he misremember the position of a key figure in the Afghanistan controversy?
In relation to that judgment, Biden returned to the topic of Eikenberry's position later in his deposition and later stated it correctly. He explained that he told the president: Karl can speak for himself and does so eloquently in some of his telegrams as well. Let me tell you just a few things. “Adding more troops will not accelerate the Afghans' ability to train because…” and so on. So these are criticisms of proposals made to the president by others in the administration who want to double down on him. ”
For some reason, this later, more pleasing recollection did not appear in Hur's report.
It is always difficult to judge a witness from the words of a cold record. Mr. Xu was in the room and left with a clear impression of Mr. Biden's “age-related decline in performance.”
I read this record from the perspective of someone who has watched Biden for decades and watched him stumble over his words, and I got a different impression. To be sure, there are many instances in which the president appears to be astonishingly ignorant. “If it was 2013, when would I have stopped being vice president?” he asked at one point. Another question asked, “In 2009, am I still vice president?” To me, this is at least partially about Biden being Biden, the same thing we're doing silently. Get it done out loud.
Mr. Xu is entitled to his own interpretation, and as he explained on Tuesday, it relates to his assessment of how a jury would evaluate Mr. Biden's conduct. Mr. Xu said he needed to “show his efforts” in explaining his own decision not to press charges.
But the special counsel was well aware that his report to Attorney General Merrick Garland would be made public — and also understood the political ramifications that would arise from a harsh assessment of Biden; I should have done that.
So he had double responsibility here and failed twice. First, he went far beyond what was necessary to outline concerns about Biden's memory and how it would affect any case against him. Second, as we have just learned, his recitation of the facts was one-sided.
“It's necessary, accurate and fair,” Hoare said. I think he had zero in three games.