How Joe Biden Could Address the Age Issue

In a report sure to find its place in the annals of politically damaging exonerations, Robert Hur, the special counsel appointed to investigate Joe Biden's handling of classified documents, cleared the President of wrongdoing, and explicitly distinguished his behavior from Donald Trump's more egregious misconduct in a similar case. But Hur, a Republican, also noted that he didn't recommend charges in part because Biden would likely come across to a jury as a "well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory." Among his claims was that Biden couldn't recall when he'd been Vice-President, or when his son Beau had died, "even within several years." Biden's supporters saw the language as a gratuitous partisan attack, a speculative salvo far outside the prosecutor's purview; his lawyers said it was "highly prejudicial." Clearly sensing the precarity of the moment, the White House called a press conference at which Biden forcefully disputed Hur's characterization.