“That is not the judgment of the press.” Those words from President Joe Biden were a telling moment after a reporter noted that there is widespread concern that he is mentally diminished. Biden’s cranky response was overshadowed by his confusion on other points during the press conference, including mixing up the presidents of Egypt and Mexico. However, it captured the sense of license and expectation of the Biden White House that the press is supposed to toe the line, as it has for three years.
In the disastrous press conference, CNN correspondent MJ Lee reminded Biden that he had urged Americans to “watch me” when he was confronted over his age: “Many [of the] American people have been watching, and they have expressed concerns about your age.”
The President angrily responded: “That is your judgment!. That is your judgment! That is not the judgment of the press.”
The next day, many in the media came to Biden’s defense and attacked the Special Counsel report which detailed his “diminished faculties.” Others cleaned up the remark about the press. Biden clearly stated “That is your judgment! That is your judgment. That is not the judgment of the press.”
NBC did not include the line in articles on the press conference despite showing it on the live coverage. Roll Call actually edited the President’s remarks to insert “for” in the key line: “That is not the judgment [for] the press.” That changed the line from questioning the right of the press to make such judgments to telling a reporter what the press view should be. Even if it was a Freudian slip, it was a telling slip. Other media inserted or suggested “public” rather than the press in the line.
The obvious exasperation of the President reflects years of a passive, enabling media that shielded Biden from difficult questions on various scandals, including the corruption scandal.
What was striking, however, was the degree to which President Biden and his staff spent this week putting out clearly false statements. In an administration that has pushed for the censorship of citizens accused of disinformation, misinformation, and malinformation, the President openly lied about his conduct and the report.
President Biden, for example, stated that the Special Counsel report found that he did not willfully retain material. It found the opposite . . . repeatedly.
He stated that he did not disclose classified material to his ghostwriter. Special Counsel Hur found precisely the opposite.
Biden stated that the material was not highly classified with “that red stuff…around the corners.” In fact, Hur found that the material was “highly sensitive,” including an Afghanistan-related memo from the National Security Adviser to President Barack Obama in 2009 marked “TOP SECRET/SCI” (Sensitive Compartmented Information).
Biden stated that all of the material was kept in locked or lockable filing cabinets. That was a lie. As the pictures vividly demonstrated, Hur found material in unlocked areas and virtually spilling out of torn boxes in his garage.
What is notable is that Biden works almost entirely off teleprompters, reading statements clearly crafted by his staff. That would indicate that some of these comments were promulgated by staff.
Even in the press conference on Friday, Ian Sams, spokesman for the White House Counsel’s Office ran into a skeptical reporter in the form of Jon Decker, the White House correspondent for Gray Television. Decker is the former head of the White House Correspondents Association and one of my former students. Decker is the gold standard for reporters and has always been objective, tough, and fair. His approach has not changed from the Trump to the Biden Administration.
Decker challenged Sam on coming to the podium to address the President’s statements and proceeding to make a false claim that this is the first Special Counsel to end his investigation without charges.
So why would the White House risk looking like it is going full “Baghdad Bob” in denying readily observable facts? Because this is no real risk.
The reason was evident the day after the report. While usually supportive outlets had to acknowledge the President’s false claims, media figures from MSNBC and CNN quickly fell into line and launched a full attack on Hur, often repeating identical words used by the White House about his observations being “gratuitous.” The problem is Hur, not a President who not only appeared confused in the press conference but openly lied about various established facts.
We have previously written how the level of advocacy and bias in the press has created a danger of a de facto state media in the United States. It is possible to have such a system by consent rather than coercion. The Biden White House has become more open in its marching orders to media, including a letter drafted by the Biden White House Legal Counsel’s Office calling for major media to “ramp up their scrutiny” of House Republicans.
The Decker-Sams exchange is key in this regard. I have previously noted that Sams is now actively managing a media campaign to blunt investigations into the President’s conduct and the alleged corruption by his family. As Decker noted, he is not a lawyer but has used that office to put an official imprimatur on these false statements. That could prove precarious in the weeks to come as the House explores impeachment allegations against the President. The use of White House staff for such purposes has been cited in past impeachment articles.
Biden’s ghostwriter erased the recordings he had after he found out a SP had been named. Why is this not obstruction of justice? If this were Republicans they would open a RICO case (sarc) and they would surely get the ghostwriter to turn on the Republican.
Because he provided a near perfect transcript, verified by the fact that the FBI was able to reconstitute almost the entire erased recording
So if you erase material to hide it from the feds and then they can “reconstruct” it you did not obstruct? Also, if you erase evidence and then swear to an affidavit did you not obstruct?
Dems vs Repubs in the legal world.
Dennis Byron, Soviet Democrat apologist, offered this Clintonesque reason for the DoJ not going after the criminal who destroyed evidence:
Because he provided a near perfect transcript, verified by the fact that the FBI was able to reconstitute almost the entire erased recording
“Verified”? Like the Soviet Democrats’ “Russia Dossier”, Dennis Byron?
And because they could NEARLY get all the transcript, then the criminal act of destroying evidence now qualifies for one of those special Soviet Democrat get out of jail free passes? Like everybody Mueller charged for lying got a pass when the FBI later got the information they wanted from those people?
And how do they know what WASN’T recovered in that transcript?
If Soviet Democrats didn’t have multiple standards: one to protect Soviet Democrats and the complete opposite to take out Republicans, these police state fascists wouldn’t have any standards at all.
ThanksAirborne!
You are dense. It’s not what I said. It’s what Hur said.
The bank robbery still happened even if the police recover the money. Excuse me, if the police recover “nearly” “almost” all the money.
Great point Rigel.
Your question was “Biden’s ghostwriter erased the recordings he had after he found out a SP had been named. Why is this not obstruction of justice?
Hur’s answer was “Because he provided a near perfect transcript, verified by the fact that the FBI was able to reconstitute almost the entire erased recording.”
If you don’t like the answer from Hur, take it up with him.
So the most important question is who is calling the shots? The majority of the nation has known right a long that Biden is incapable of making decisions. Who has been writing all his cue cards and who has been driving the nation to ruin? Now it’s out in the open so why is no one asking what unelected person or group is running the show?
Fascinating question Margot and my guess is that Jill has a big hand in running things. Idiot historians like Douglas Brinkley, Jon Meacham and Michael Beschloss convinced the already diminished Biden that he is FDR and Lincoln and they may have convinced Jill that she is Eleanor and Edith Wilson rolled into one.
Of course these moronic historians think Wilson was a great president and I guess it is ironic because a) he was a censorious dictator when it came to dissent, b) he was a racist and c) he saw us into WWI. Biden is a censorious little fascist, has always been a racist and he is seeing us into WWIII.
Margot and HullBobby,
Great comments.
Who is running the WH and who is driving the US into ruin indeed.
The real danger is now that the quiet part that has been said out loud, will those running the WH quietly develop an exit strategy or will they double down to hold on to power?
The Democrats have really painted themselves into a corner.
The fun part is watching all those TDS sufferers twist themselves into denying or deflecting while their narratives crumble and fall all around them. Their house is on fire and they declare, “This is fine!”
Hur should have recommended Biden being indicted (after he is out of office) because his retention of classified documents is more egregious than Trump’s. Of course being spoiled brats the Dems don’t walk away from the scathing report’s legal conclusions, they rail against the “dicta” in the report.
What I don’t understand is why Hur said he wouldn’t bring charges??? All the elements of the crime are present and Biden’s mental state at the time of some of the offenses wasn’t what it is today. Plus it isn’t his job to wonder how a jury might react to a defendant at a future trial.
Biden is either cogent and should therefore face a trial or he is not cogent and he should be removed from office. Pick one.
Because (he says) he does not believe he could prove it beyond a reasonable doubt given the “chain or custody” of the documents (some of which go back 30 years)
But a NY jury can “PROVE” that Trump assaulted a woman 25 years ago??? So you and your ilk argued that Kavanaugh assaulted a woman 30 years ago when she doesn’t remember the year, the house and who else was there? But Biden can’t be proven to have had documents that ARE IN HIS DAMN GARAGE, IN HIS DAMN OFFICE and IN HIS DAMN “THINK TANK”?
You asked “What I don’t understand is why Hur said he wouldn’t bring charges???”
Hur’s answer was “Because he does not believe he could prove it beyond a reasonable doubt given the “chain or custody” of the documents (some of which go back 30 years)”
If you really wanted to make a long winded nonsensical comment on Hur’s report, why didn’t you just post your nonsense with your original question?
Dennis Byron, Soviet Democrat apparatchik, offers the Soviet Democrats’ Comey Escape Clause for The Big Guy:
Because (he says) he does not believe he could prove it beyond a reasonable doubt given the “chain or custody” of the documents (some of which go back 30 years)
That’s pretty close to being verbatim what Comey offered as his excuse after he assumed the powers of the Attorney General to tell Americans “No reasonable prosecutor would indict Hillary Clinton” – despite the fact she organized the destruction of a mountain of electronic devices and classified documents that had been subpoenaed.
And we’re supposed to believe that, just as we’re supposed to believe Comey. Or that Blowjob Bill Clinton just accidentally bumped into Obama’s Attorney General on the ramp at a small airport just days before the decision on whether to indict his wife, where they held a private little discussion that was supposed to be out of sight of prying eyes… and they only talked about the kids and grandkids.
Just as we’re supposed to believe Jack Smith is an impartial and independent special prosecutor after the well known hit jobs he did for Bolshevik Barack and Bribery Biden on their political opponents while working in their DoJ.
More and more the Soviet Democrats are operating from the position of “Please don’t believe your lying eyes”… as though we’ve never, ever seen this coming from the Soviet Democrats either in Obama’s two terms or now in Obama’s Third Term.
The OP asked “What I don’t understand is why Hur said he wouldn’t bring charges???”
Hur’s answer was “Because he does not believe he could prove it beyond a reasonable doubt given the “chain or custody” of the documents (some of which go back 30 years)”
If you really wanted to make a long winded nonsensical comment on Hur’s report with stupid bold letters and stupid personal attacks, go comment on some stupid blog that likes that sort of thing and leave serious commentary to we adults
The Democrats are trapped. They have to keep Biden because the 8 million illegal migrants know Joe Biden has invited them to the US and provided the worldwide infrastructure for the invasion. 8 millions illegals will all vote for Biden, but probably not another Democrat. Millions of illegal voters in the 6 key Swing States is more than enough to win the ’24 election for the Dems and get the House and Senate. If that happens we will see 50 to 100 million illegal migrants in the US who will completely destroy the culture and the economy. At that point there will probably be a civil war. That’s the goal of the psychopaths who must destroy America at all costs to retain power. The ’24 election is the most important election in U.S. history.
Biden, and any Democrat, cannot handle tough questions because they have almost no experience doing so. Have you ever seen Pelosi when she gets a somewhat tough question when she accidently meets a Fox reporter? She gets apoplectic, irate and nasty.
The biggest sin “reporters” commit is not asking the dreaded follow-up question when talking to a Democrat. The Dems can lie with impunity because when asked a question they lie and then they filibuster the remaining time that a possibly fair reporter has. Of course they seldom go against a fair reporter.
One theory I have is that Biden’s staff controls what meds he takes and when going to sit with Hur they held his meds back as to make him not be able to remember material facts. Of course being Biden’s staff they made the wrong decision and it is blowing up in their faces right now.
Maybe y’all Democrats should have done a better job of investigating election integrity issues in 2020. Then maybe we would still have a country leading the world in peace and prosperity and not a dumpster fire version of the Titanic. This is the part where you reap what you have sown and I, for one, am starting to enjoy it.
I don’t know what to say anymore except thank you for documenting things so objectively, and I hope people are waking up. Ranting much beyond that at this point just makes me look like a troll.
I’m just glad we have precedents in place now so that he can be relentlessly prosecuted for all of these things when a new administration takes over.
@cionnath
Same here. I hope the many precedent-land mines this administration has stepped on continue to accumulate. They are all but ensuring this’ll be much tougher to pull off in the future, at least in some regards.
The wheels are finally coming off this bizarre administration. This coordinated ruse goes far beyond the Emperor’s New Clothes. I bet it is tough for journalists to be told to stand down by their bosses and play nice or find another profession.
Biden’s diminished capabilities and his champagne appetite as a “public servant” were obvious well before the election. It was only a matter of time. And now this country is in shambles. Maybe a few people are waking up.
E.M.
Oh, there are a lot of people waking up.
There are Black Democrats in Chicago who are angry at the Biden admin and the DNC for providing all those illegal immigrants with money, services, shelter the Black community has been asking for, for decades. The ones the Democrat party has used, abused for years if not decades.
But as one Democrat put it recently, all those illegal immigrants are more important than native minorities.
I’m glad that you discussed that statement by Biden. I thought that it was bizarre when he so angrily said it — like, who did he think that those folks yelling questions were if not “the press”? Rather than being watchdogs, they’ve largely become lapdogs of the administration. The CNN reporter surprisingly asked a very good question. Of course the public wonders what’s going on with the President when he mostly hides, misspeaks, needs help from the Easter Bunny and gets us involved in unnecessary world conflicts, not to mention Afghanistan, the border, outrageous over-spending and a shaky economy.
The report is damning and the pictures telling — no, those overflowing boxes strewn about do not resemble “locked file cabinets.” Not a lot of mention has been made of Hunter’s free access to those documents — no precautions seem to have been made to prevent his access, and we may not yet know exactly what he did, he did not have clearance.
What I have learned this week is that Biden apparently has had memory problems since 2017, according to the report. Hur was able to recover the audio from the tapes that the Ghost Writer had destroyed, and felt that Biden was very slow. The part where Biden cautioned the writer to be careful as he read classified information to him was telling — wasn’t Biden supposed to be the one exercising caution (and thus not read it aloud)? How can the writer un-hear what he has heard? Also, the official transcripts of Biden’s statements are apparently sanitized — his “gaffes” are removed and the words that he should have said are inserted, so they’re not really transcripts (like Mexico was substituted for Egypt in the transcript). I guess that it’s to be expected from an administration that values optics over reality.
I haven’t seen much discussion about Claudia Tenney’s letter to Garland about the 25th Amendment.
I think that I’ll go straighten up my basement and do some filing. If nothing else, this has been a good reminder to do those tasks.
Welcome to Democrat Fascist
Remove Centralized Power…cut 50% of Federal Spending
5% tax on the GROSS of all Wall Street Transactions and moving money offshore, make it about investing.
We have TOO MUCH CENTRALIZED POWER!
Joe is secure as long as the alternative is Harris.
Exactly how can Harris be worse? Joe is a brought out in the public eye 2 or 3 times a week for short stretches. Harris might be deluded enough to believe she can call her own shots, but we all know Obama is running the entirety of the Executive Branch. That means the top 2 or 3 tiers of civil servants at all the agencies.
Still waiting for some one to explain why Obama is living in DC
That was a shrewdly played hand; find someone worse than you.
Biden/DEMS/Main Street Media/Global Elites etc NOBODY, except their radical woke followers, Believes what they say. They can’t hide Biden and Biden issues/talks/actions/movements etc – DEMs and Global/Washington/Davos/World Economic forum Great Reset Crowd in in trouble and they will do anything and everything and say anything and everything to save Biden and DEMS – its going to get even worse as we approach the elections
My theory for the past 40 years is that the elite Democrats opinion shapers – whether Democrat party communication professionals; left wing think tanks; or even so called opinion “journalists” at most major MSM outlets – pretty much ALL know what they are selling his horsesh!t. However, a chunk of their voters sincerely believe what they are selling while another chunk are fully aware they are buying, and helping sell, horsesh!t. For whatever reason, their loyalty to the party supersedes all else.
I’d put Natacha, Svelez and pretty much all the other Lefties who comment on this blog regularly as very well informed who are fully aware they are buying and helping sell horsesh!t. But many rank and file Democrat voters who don’t have the time or inclination to be very well informed are true believers who are not aware they’re being sold horsesh!t.
I just don’t have a good feel for how many are true believers and how many are horsesh!t buyers/sellers.
The Dems and the media are talking about Biden’s age as the problem. They likely would simply turn that same criticism against Trump who is a similar age. But age isn’t the problem, it is his diminished mental and physical state that is alarming. There are many people older than Biden who are mentally sharp. Thomas Sowell, for example. Also, he is guilty of having and sharing classified material and that is the issue, not that he was forthcoming in admitting he had the documents. (He wasn’t. It was months that his lawyers privately worked the issue before reporting that he had the documents.). In short: He is guilty of having and sharing classified documents AND he is not fit to be president. ALSO the “mainstream media” once again shows they cannot be trusted. On a side note: This article needs proofreading.
I can’t help but wonder, if the Biden team notified the Justice Department of the documents…. because after Trump’s indictment…. they had a ghost writer out there …fully aware of what Biden had and had shared. Rather than risk exposure… perhaps they thought it wise to be proactive. So perhaps they were being less “forthcoming” than they were avoiding exposure by the ghost writer… I wonder if he got a check..since he seems to have destroyed evidence.
“Yes it hurt to see this error common with the third graders.” “Hurt” come on give us a break. Stay focused on the issue and not typos.
Was the Special Counsel criticizing Biden’s “diminished faculties” or was Hur really saying that Biden would lie on the stand and pretend to have memory loss… just like he lied to the Special Counsel… just as he has been lying to we Americans for 50 years
Wondered why he wasn’t going to address the Super Bowl, then it hit me “Let’s go Brandon”. That crowd would tear him up.
The way I read Hur’s report, he would have come out differently on bringing charges but for his assessment of the impact of Biden’s cognitive weaknesses on a jury. Is this how others read it?
No I read it that Hur is really saying that Biden would lie on the stand and pretend to have memory loss… just like he lied to the Special Counsel… just as he has been lying to we Americans for 50 years
Could be, but that is in effect the same thing. The question I am really asking is whether, absent that, Hur believed he had the evidence to convict beyond a reasonable doubt?
Life’s too short so I’m not going to read the report but my understanding is that Hur said he cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt (something about willful something) that Biden knew all the secret stuff in 3-4 locations was where it was and how it got there because everyone in the “chain of custody” clammed up. So much for being a loyal staffer because Biden in his remarks earlier that day blamed his staff.
The bigger issue is that given Biden was just a VP and a Senator during the years involved, he should never had any of this stuff except perhaps his own notes (which he read to the ghostwriter)
At a minimum, read pages 8-10 and look at some photos.
We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself
to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning,
elderly man with a poor memory. Based on our direct interactions with and
observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify
reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict
him-by then a former president well into his eighties-of a serious felony that
requires a mental state of willfulness.
https://www.justice.gov/storage/report-from-special-counsel-robert-k-hur-february-2024.pdf
Given that he had material that a VP or Senator should never had period… and that the documents were actually marked Classified or Secret..and there was a ghost writer who had tapes with Biden discussing the material. Sounds like he had a lot of evidence… but you get a senile old man on the stand and who is going to send such a sympathetic figure to jail… especially in DC.
Daniel, I have to disagree with you .
Hur took an off ramp. No one ever considered there would be charges. Outlining the dementia, gave him that.
Outside of that, Garland did not have to release Hurs report. Could have created his own, quoting from the report,
It’s a stretch, but maybe Garland is tired of getting yelled at and treated like a pawn by Obama, and decided to pull the plug on this scam.
iowan2 posted: Outlining the dementia, gave him that.
With respect; give Hur absolutely nothing. He brought out the “No reasonable prosecutor would indict” excuse, only with a twist; now it’s no “reasonable jury would convict”.
Having given The Big Guy a pass on prosecution that was almost verbatim what Hillary Clinton got, Hur is left having to provide some sort of justification for not indicting Biden as Trump was swiftly indicted in a fraction of the time. Hur had to come up with some justification, and apparently that’s all he could think of.
So, do we get to call him out for misstating the situation? I.e. “No jury in Washington DC will ever convict a Soviet Democrat or a Soviet Democrat apparatchik, no matter how obvious the crime”.
Or do we call him out by pointing out that elderly criminals that are now into dementia are regularly put on trial for crimes they committed decades before when they were as mentally competent as they ever were? I don’t know, but I suspect, that if anyone went through Hur’s record as a prosecutor, there would be multiple instances when the prosecutors he was responsible for indicted and prosecuted criminals with similar levels of cognitive disability as Biden has.
This prosecutor, BTW, was chosen by the same people who carefully chose to bring Jack Smith back as an allegedly independent and impartial prosecutor despite his record of targeting Obama/Biden’s political enemies (try ‘because of’) standing in their way of reelection. Bringing him back despite SCOTUS unanimously reversing those terribly flawed prosecutions with decisions that characterized Jack Smith as deliberately changing and creating new statute to justify those prosecutions. He should have been disbarred – but now he’s back as a supposedly independent and unbiased prosecutor for Trump.
Would a Republican investigated by a Soviet Democrat special counsel have gotten the same excuses given here?
Scooter Libby – who Comey’s prosecutor knew wasn’t the one who leaked the name, but prosecuted and jailed him anyways? The people investigated by Robert Mueller’s team of Soviet Democrat police state fascists? How about those being investigated and indicted by Jack Smith?
This is all probably rhetorical, but there is nothing to give Hur credit for when this was just all he could come up with to cover his ass after giving The Big Guy a pass that no Republican nor any private citizen would have gotten.
The Biden administration and the state media are profoundly unpopular and corrupt, but desperate to survive past 2024. Not looking good for democracy and freedom of expression.
Toe, not tow
yes, it hurt to see this error common with third-graders. Not a typo, but a clear misuse of language.
Where does it say “tow?”
Oldman, Hurt? You’re better than that. Put yourself in his place, with his schedule. He may simply voice record his posts and his 20 something aide types it up.
Whatever the case, if you ‘new’ what word he should have used, then how much could it possibly have hurt.
OK Olly (and Golden Country), I’ll retract that comment and give him some slack. Too many decades of fly-specking briefs does lead to a very high standard for writing by a lawyer. That said, his proofreader should be replaced.
Wise, in full disclosure, my first deployment in the Navy back in 1980, my wife and I wrote nearly every day. I found myself proofreading her letters. I never told her. I knew exactly what she meant and I didn’t want to embarrass her.