Kamala Harris rips "politically motivated" comments about Biden's memory

Washington DC - Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday blasted a special counsel report that raised damaging questions over President Joe Biden's age and memory as being a political hit-job.

Vice President Kamala Harris has defended President Biden after his mental acuity was questioned in a report related to his handling of classified documents.
Vice President Kamala Harris has defended President Biden after his mental acuity was questioned in a report related to his handling of classified documents.  © Roberto SCHMIDT / AFP

"The way that the president's demeanor in that report was characterized could not be more wrong on the facts and [was] clearly politically motivated," Harris said when asked about special counsel Robert Hur's report.

The report cleared Biden of mishandling classified documents but said the 81-year-old Democrat came across as a "well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory."

Harris, herself a former senior prosecutor, said the comments about Biden's mental acuity in the report were "gratuitous, inaccurate and inappropriate."

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Her comments marked a new line of attack for Biden and the White House, who, while heavily criticizing the report had not yet trained their fire on the special prosecutor himself.

Hur was appointed by Republican then-president Donald Trump to be US Attorney for the District of Maryland in 2017 before being named by Biden's attorney general, Merrick Garland, as special counsel in the documents case.

A furious Biden responded in a surprise address from the White House on Thursday night, saying "My memory is fine" and lambasting the special counsel for claiming that he was unable to remember even the date of his son Beau's death in 2015.

Cover photo: Roberto SCHMIDT / AFP

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