US Vice President Kamala Harris slams special counsel’s claim about Biden’s age, memory

Washington: US Vice President Kamala Harris, trusted lieutenant and running mate of President Joe Biden in 2024 presidential elections, is using her outreach and clout with African Americans, Hispanics and Asians and Indians in tandem with the White House working overtime in damage control exercise to discredit a special counsel’s claims that Biden suffers from memory loss.

She and the White House have dismissed the Trump appointed special counsel Robert Hur’s report on classified documents, that Hur charged Biden took home when he was vice president under then President Barack Obama, as inaccurate, out of bounds and politically motivated.

President Biden reacted emotionally to the charges on his son’s death, telling Hur that he damned well knew well and was shattered by his son’s death and he (Hur) should have stayed out of it. Hur’s uncharacteristic remarks about Biden’s memory loss touched a raw nerve in the president.

“As a former prosecutor, the comments that were made by that prosecutor: gratuitous, inaccurate and inappropriate,” said Vice President Kamala Harris, who previously served as California’s attorney general.

“The way that the president’s demeanour in that report was characterised could not be more wrong on the facts, and clearly politically motivated,” said Harris, addressing the report after speaking at a White House event on gun violence prevention. She is now the roving ambassador of President Biden campaigning in key swing states on how the democrats will keep abortion rights on the statute books as laid out in the Roe vs Wade case, sought to be demolished by the Republicans in the Congress.

Along with the Presidential elections in 2024, the house of representatives also goes to polls to elect new law makers - the trend is against the republicans on the abortions issue but the classified documents case and border issue could spiral out of control if not contained, analysts say. The GOP lost three states on the abortion issue in the off year elections in 2023 and mid term elections in 2022.

While the term of office for a senator is six years, that of a house representative of the congress is only two years.

Putting damage control measures to contain the bombshell special counsel report that elevated concerns about Biden’s age and mental fitness, White House counsel spokesman Ian Sams sought to reject the findings at a briefing with reporters. Sams pointed to “a pressurised political environment” in which he said Republicans have “made up claims of a two-tiered system of justice between Republicans and Democrats.”

“When the inevitable conclusion is that the facts and the evidence don’t support any charges, you’re left to wonder why this report spends time making gratuitous and inappropriate criticisms of the president,” Sams said.

Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Hur as special counsel to lead the investigation into Biden’s classified documents ,and Robert Hur is a Republican and former Trump appointee as is the US attorney in Maryland.

Hur’s report, released Thursday, recommended no charges against Biden over classified documents found at the President’s Delaware residence but cited evidence that Biden “wilfully retained” classified materials. Nevertheless, Hur concluded that jurors would likely find reasonable doubt.

The material difference between Trumps classified documents case and Biden’s is that the former declined to hand over the documents to the National Archives but Biden admitted he took it and handed it over to the National Archives following protocols of the executive office, media reports said. (IANS)

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