It’s amazing how fast things can change. Joe Biden wanted a de-Trump the Justice Department, signaling a new era of independence for the institution until they wrote about how the president’s memory was hot garbage. During an interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur regarding the president’s mishandling of classified information, Joe couldn’t remember when his son, Beau, died. His days as vice president were also spotty. The conclusion was that Biden was guilty but not responsible, which is the most DC conclusion for a DOJ probe ever. Biden was too senile to face the music. The White House was incensed over these portions, with correspondences suggesting that it led to an all-out war between the White House and the DOJ. So much for departmental independence (via NYT):
The White House clashed with the Justice Department in the run-up to the release of a special counsel report last week about President Biden’s handling of classified information, with a top department official rejecting complaints from Mr. Biden’s lawyers about disparaging comments in the report regarding the president, previously undisclosed correspondence shows.
White House and personal lawyers for Mr. Biden wrote to Attorney General Merrick B. Garland the day before he released the report by the special counsel, Robert K. Hur, objecting to passages in which Mr. Hur suggested that Mr. Biden’s memory was failing and questioned some of his actions even though he found no basis to prosecute him.
The lawyers said Mr. Hur’s comments “openly, obviously and blatantly violate department policy and practice,” the letters, obtained by The New York Times, show.
The next day, as the department was preparing to make the report public, Bradley Weinsheimer — an associate deputy attorney general and the department’s senior career official, or nonpolitical appointee — wrote back rejecting their criticism. He insisted that the comments in the report “fall well within the department’s standards for public release.”
[…]
Among other things, the letters show that the White House and Justice Department sparred over whether the report was comparable to a 2016 news conference in which James B. Comey Jr., then the F.B.I. director, rebuked the Democratic presidential nominee that year, Hillary Clinton, over her use of a private email server, even as he announced that he was recommending against prosecuting her.
They also underscored long-simmering tensions between the White House and the Justice Department over decisions made by Mr. Garland, even as the Biden administration has sought to restore the norm of Justice Department investigative independence from White House influence after the Trump administration.
In registering their objections, Mr. Biden’s lawyers stopped short of asking Mr. Garland to withhold anything from the report or to instruct Mr. Hur to rewrite it.
Mr. Hur is set to appear before the House Judiciary Committee on March 12. And yes, he did follow department policy in noting the mitigating circumstances concerning litigation, which he is duty-bound to disclose to his boss, Attorney General Merrick Garland. The real story here is that Biden’s team got upset that there was documentation of the president short-circuiting during an interview.
Since the report was released last Thursday, Biden’s lawyer, Bob Bauer, who is the husband of Senior White House communications adviser Anita Dunn, has been unintentionally making the argument for the release of the Hur transcript and audio files for making outlandish declarations about Biden's memory. He’s sharp as a tack, he says but fell short of endorsing the release of these files during his interviews on the Sunday morning talk shows. Now, Hur might not have been the one to mention Beau’s death during the deposition.
Hello 👇 https://t.co/wNyXXtm6Oo pic.twitter.com/3q3EcXftnH
— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) February 14, 2024
Oh man. Let’s see the transcripts. https://t.co/HU2YHC0FeF
— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) February 14, 2024
With 86 percent thinking Biden is too old, this report was damaging. And maybe it was like a James Comey moment, where the Democrat gets scorched for being an idiot with state secrets but not charged. In both Hillary and Biden’s case, these errors were avoidable. But the way this White House reacts to the truth about Biden’s frailty goes beyond norms. Will time make this go away? I’m not so sure. Biden can’t de-age and will make another massive mental error between now and Election Day. The poll data doesn't lie: Americans are worried about Joe's mental health.
The other part of this blow-up is the Biden White House's ongoing tussle with the Justice Department. The president is reportedly infuriated with Garland for moving too slowly on the Trump investigations, noting that a trial could have occurred or even concluded by now, exposing that Biden wanted to abuse the courts and the DOJ to go after his political rival.