WASHINGTON – United States President Joe Biden insisted his memory is “fine” and lambasted a Justice Department report on his handling of classified information, particularly its questions about his mental acuity and age that have proven politically damaging.

At an impromptu White House news conference on Feb 8, Mr Biden, 81, answered defiantly – and sometimes angrily – questions about his capacity to continue serving in the White House. He also grew emotional in discussing a claim that he could not remember when his son Beau had died.

“I’m well-meaning, and I’m an elderly man and I know what the hell I’m doing. I’ve been president, and I’ve put this country back on its feet. I don’t need his recommendation,” Mr Biden said, referring to Special Counsel Robert Hur.

Yet even as he defended himself against a tide of scrutiny about his mental fitness, Mr Biden mistakenly referred to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as the leader of Mexico.

That remark – made at the end of the news conference after he had nearly walked out of the room – was likely to fuel concerns of those already worried about his fitness.

The special counsel report that described Mr Biden as an “elderly man with a poor memory”, and chronicled repeated occasions where he struggled to recall basic facts, is likely to deepen concerns about his age as he heads into a tough re-election battle.

The report from Mr Hur, who was investigating Mr Biden’s handling of classified material, offered a jarring portrait of the President’s acuity.

Mr Biden is described forgetting when his term as vice-president ended, the general timeframe in which his son Beau died from cancer, and the details of critical foreign policy debates during the Obama administration.

The revelations came after an already tough week for Mr Biden that included a series of high-profile gaffes, in which he mistook long-dead European leaders for their living counterparts while speaking to supporters and donors on the campaign trail.

Voters have indicated that concerns about Mr Biden’s age rank as one of their biggest issues heading into an expected rematch with former president Donald Trump for the White House.

Three-quarters of voters, including half of Democrats, said in an NBC News poll released earlier this week that they had concerns about Mr Biden’s mental and physical health.

He will be 82 at the start of a second term and 86 at the end.

Those concerns are unlikely to be assuaged by the special counsel report released on Feb 8, which cleared Mr Biden of criminal wrongdoing after the discovery of classified materials at his home and personal office.

Mr Biden’s critics pounced on the issue shortly after the release of the report. 

The Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives declared the President “unfit” for office.

“A man too incapable of being held accountable for mishandling classified information is certainly unfit for the Oval Office,” said Speaker Mike Johnson, a close ally of Trump.

“If you’re too senile to stand trial, then you’re too senile to be president,” said Mr Alex Pfeiffer, communications director for Trump’s political action committee. 

Mrs Nikki Haley, Trump’s remaining Republican primary challenger, said on social media that the findings represented a “double standard” – and used the report to attack both her primary opponent and Mr Biden.

“If Biden’s defence is old age and forgetfulness, Trump can easily make the same claim,” she wrote. “Trump should quickly hire Biden’s lawyers.”

Later, she renewed her call for Mr Biden to take a mental competency test, something she supports for all politicians over the age of 75 – her primary rival, Trump, is 77.

‘Painfully Slow’

The special counsel describes Mr Biden’s conversations with a researcher helping him write a book ahead of his presidential run as “painfully slow”, with the President “struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries”.

Mr Hur said Mr Biden’s memory was worse during an interview with prosecutors, adding that he stumbled repeatedly to recall basic facts.

“In a case where the government must prove that Mr Biden knew he had possession of the classified Afghanistan documents after the vice-presidency and chose to keep those documents, knowing he was violating the law, we expect that at trial, his attorneys would emphasise these limitations in his recall,” he wrote.

It “would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him – by then a former president well into his 80s – of a serious felony that requires a mental state of wilfulness”.

Attorneys for Mr Biden criticised the report, suggesting that Mr Hur, a former US attorney who was nominated by Trump, offered excessive details and editorialised in his report.

The report included “a number of inaccurate and inappropriate comments”, Mr Biden’s attorney, Mr Richard Sauber, said in a statement.

In a letter to the special counsel, Mr Sauber said Mr Hur “uses highly prejudicial language to describe a commonplace occurrence among witnesses: a lack of recall of years-old events”.

Multiple White House aides noted that Mr Hur’s interview of Mr Biden occurred the day after the Oct 7 militant attack on Israel, implying that he may have been distracted by matters of state.

Mr Bob Bauer, Mr Biden’s personal attorney, accused Mr Hur of “investigative excess” that flouted Justice Department regulations and norms.

“Very little in this opus adds to a clear, succinctly stated understanding of a straightforward conclusion: no misconduct occurred, no charges are warranted,” Mr Bauer said.

Recent gaffes

The report was released just hours after White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre defended Mr Biden’s campaign-trail gaffes.

In recent days, Mr Biden repeatedly botched a story about his first Group of Seven summit after taking office in 2021, first conflating French President Emmanuel Macron with Mr Francois Mitterrand, who died in 1996, and later confusing then German Chancellor Angela Merkel for Mr Helmut Kohl.

Ms Jean-Pierre dismissed concerns about Mr Biden’s misstatements, noting recent instances when Mr Johnson mistook Iran for Israel, and Fox News host Sean Hannity confused former Representative Jason Chaffetz for Mr Matt Gaetz.

“Many people, they can misspeak sometimes,” she said.

Mr Biden may also benefit from his opponent’s long history of similar verbal gaffes.

Trump in recent months has confused Hungarian leader Viktor Orban with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Mrs Haley for former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. BLOOMBERG, AFP, REUTERS, NYTIMES