Biden lawyer calls special counsel Hur’s report ‘off the rails’: Live

Bob Bauer, Joe Biden’s personal lawyer, said a report issued by special counsel Robert Hur that sparked concerns over the president’s age was “off the rails.”

“This is a report that went off the rails,” he said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “A shabby work product.”

The report cleared Mr Biden of criminal wrongdoing in handling classified documents after leaving the Obama administration, but included comments on the president’s age and mental acuity.

It described Mr Biden as “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” and said he had “diminished faculties in advancing age.”

Mr Hur noted that a jury might be unwillig to convict Mr Biden because his age and “diminished faculties” could potentially make him sympathetic.

Mr Biden responded by saying there was nothing wrong with his memory, and Democrats, including Vice President Kamala Harris, have gone on the offensive to defend the president in the media.

Joe Biden has called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to hold off invading Rafah until a plan is in place that would prevent massive civilian casualties.

Gazans fleeing Israel’s bombardment and military advances have sought shelter in Rafah, a city in the south of the Gaza Strip. An estimated 1.4m Palestinians are currently in the region after being displaced by Israel’s campaign against Hamas.

The White House released a synopsis of a call between Mr Biden and Mr Netanyahu on Sunday.

Mr Biden reportedly “raffirmed his view that a military operation in Rafah should not proceed without a credible and executable plan for ensuring the safety and support for the more than one million people sheltering there,” according to the White House report.

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Joe Biden has reportedly advised Isreali Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to invade Rafah, where 1.4m Palestinians have been forced to seek shelter from Isreali bombardment, until he has a credible plan for doing so without causing massive civilian casualties.

Mr Biden reportedly said “a military operation in Rafah should not proceed without a credible and executable plan for ensuring the safety of and support for the more than one million people sheltering there”, according to a White House synopsis of a call between the two men.

Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday came out swinging with a full-throated defence of President Joe Biden in the wake of an unflattering report on his conduct by a Republican special prosecutor.

Ms Harris was speaking in the Indian Treaty Room at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building at an event hosted by the White House’s gun violence prevention office when she addressed the matter of Mr Hur’s report, which critics have assailed as including gratuitous attacks on the president even as it announced that he will not face any criminal charges stemming from the discovery of classified documents at his Delaware home.

She said she has been “privileged and proud to serve as vice president of the United States” under Mr Biden, and said Mr Hur’s remarks on Mr Biden’s age and memory were “gratuitous, inaccurate, and inappropriate”.

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An angry and animated President Joe Biden on Thursday hit back at a Republican prosecutor’s claim that his memory is faulty in last-minute remarks to reporters on Thursday.

Earlier in the day, the Department of Justice released a report by Special Counsel Robert Hur, the former Maryland US Attorney who Attorney General Merrick Garland charged with probing how classified documents ended up at Mr Biden’s home in Delaware and former office in Washington.

Mr Hur did not recommend that Mr Biden face criminal charges, citing what he described as significant “mitigating factors” which led him to state that charges were not warranted and would not have been warranted even if Mr Biden were not president and barred from being prosecuted by Department of Justice policy.

Andrew Feinberg filed this report from Washington, DC:

President Joe Biden “wilfully” held on to classified materials that were discovered at his home in Delaware and the office of a think tank in Washington DC, but should not face criminal charges for doing so, a special prosecutor appointed by the attorney general found in a report released on Thursday.

The special counsel, former Trump appointee and ex-Maryland US Attorney Robert Hur, did not recommend that Mr Biden face criminal charges, citing what he described as significant “mitigating factors” which led him to state that charges were not warranted and would not have been warranted even if Mr Biden were not president and barred from being prosecuted by Department of Justice policy.

John Bowden reports from Washington, DC:

How it began: President Joe Biden was urgently seeking more money from Congress to aid Ukraine and Israel. He took a gamble by seizing on GOP demands to simultaneously address one of his biggest political liabilities — illegal migration at the U.S.-Mexico border.

How it ended: Biden came close to succeeding, before it all fell apart spectacularly. Now the president is trying to make the best of it after a major congressional deal was scuttled once Republican front-runner Donald Trump got involved. And Biden is intent on showing that the former president and his “Make America Great Again” Republican acolytes in Congress aren’t really interested in solutions.

In between: There is a story of a president willing to anger his own party’s activist class in an election year, rare hope for bipartisan progress on one of the third rails of American politics, and a sudden, stunning collapse publicly engineered by Trump that Biden’s team now sees as a political gift.

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An angry and animated President Joe Biden on Thursday hit back at a Republican prosecutor’s claim that his memory is faulty in last-minute remarks to reporters on Thursday.

Earlier in the day, the Department of Justice released a report by Special Counsel Robert Hur, the former Maryland US Attorney who Attorney General Merrick Garland charged with probing how classified documents ended up at Mr Biden’s home in Delaware and former office in Washington.

Mr Hur did not recommend that Mr Biden face criminal charges, citing what he described as significant “mitigating factors” which led him to state that charges were not warranted and would not have been warranted even if Mr Biden were not president and barred from being prosecuted by Department of Justice policy.

Andrew Feinberg filed this report from Washington, DC: