Jim Hartman
Special Counsel Robert Hur’s Feb. 5 report on President Biden’s misuse of classified documents may have been a turning point.
It chronicled the president’s failure to recall basic facts of his life.
Hur’s account of his five-hours of interviews with Biden over two days was devastating. His report exposes what most Americans have suspected based on Biden’s many public misstatements and faltering physical presence.
Biden couldn’t recall which years he was vice president or even when his son Beau died.
Biden’s mental frailty is a stated reason by Hur for not prosecuting Biden for his document mishandling as a criminal offense before a jury.
The report documents that Biden willfully retained and disclosed secret documents to others from his time in the U.S. Senate and as vice president. They were found in a variety of unsecured places including in a damaged cardboard box in Biden’s cluttered Delaware garage.
Hur concluded “no criminal charges are warranted,” largely as a result of his assessment that a jury would not convict “a sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.”
Democrats are raging against Hur, but an overwhelming majority of Americans think Biden is too old for another term.
A recent poll by ABC News/Ipsos found a whopping 86 percent of Americans believe Biden is too old to serve another four years as president. That includes 73 percent of Democrats.
A 62 percent majority also believe Donald Trump is too old to be president.
If Biden believes his mental faculties were unfairly maligned by Hur, there’s an easy way to resolve it. Biden could have the Justice Department release the transcript of his five-hour interview.
Let the public see the Biden-Hur transcript, along with any recordings.
This also raises the issue of a two-tiered system of justice. Trump faces 40 charges for mishandling documents.
Hur emphasized Biden cooperated in the return of classified documents while Trump lied about them and thwarted government efforts to get them back. Trump claims a double standard.
On Feb. 16, a Manhattan judge ordered Trump and his business to pay an astronomical $453.5 million, including interest, and barred him from serving in a top role of any New York company for three years.
Trump and his business were found liable for fraudulently inflating asset values of his properties to lenders – though nobody lost money. The trial established that Trump valuations over decades were greatly overstated to get more favorable loan terms from banks.
Trump’s courtroom bombast contributed to the excessive damage award by the judge, a Democrat.
This case was brought by Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James, who vowed as a candidate to find Trump guilty of something. It’s a troubling case of targeted civil prosecution.
On Jan. 26, a unanimous Manhattan civil jury awarded writer E. Jean Carroll an eye-popping $83.3 million against Trump, including punitive damages, for defamatory statements disparaging her.
Last year, a separate Manhattan civil jury awarded Carroll $5 million, finding Trump sexually abused her.
Also in New York, a March 25 trial date was set in the criminal hush-money case involving porn star Stormy Daniels. That means the weakest criminal charges against Trump will go to trial first.
Trump’s fixer Michael Cohen paid $130,000 to Daniels in 2016 disguised as a payment for legal services. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, indicted Trump for falsifying business records. It’s dishonest behavior.
But Bragg charged it as a felony which requires proof that Trump kept phony books intending to commit or conceal a second crime – which is a major legal stretch.
And in Georgia, Fulton County DA Fani Willis, a Democrat, could get disqualified. She has brought a massive racketeering case against Trump that may now collapse.
Trump’s lucky in his opponents. He can claim being the victim of partisan prosecutorial abuse.
E-mail Jim Hartman at lawdocman1@aol.com.