法律标题——乔·拜登总统不会因处理机密文件而面临起诉，这与他将再次竞选的前总统形成鲜明对比——并不具有政治影响力。
相反，这位特别顾问对拜登可能不会被定罪的理由进行了延伸，这立即引发了人们对总统是否有能力继续做好这项工作的新质疑。
这特别顾问罗伯特·胡尔报道尽管有证据表明拜登在担任副总统期间保留了与阿富汗政策有关的机密文件，甚至与一名代笔人分享这些文件以帮助撰写回忆录，但他发现“在这件事上没有刑事指控”。
在Hur的叙述中，事情从那里开始变得更糟，他特别引用了总统与特别顾问办公室自愿进行的互动记录。根据Hur的说法，在去年10月的采访中，总统的“准确性和回忆力有限”。Hur最终发现，陪审团可能会认为拜登是“一个有同情心、善意且记忆力很差的老人。”
“根据我们与他的直接互动和对他的观察，他是许多陪审员想要确定合理怀疑的人，”Hur写道。“很难说服陪审团判他有罪——当时这位前总统已经80多岁了——这是一项严重的重罪，需要一种任性的精神状态。”
具体来说，Hur写道，现年81岁的拜登不记得他的副总统任期是何时开始或结束的;没有回忆起儿子死亡的日期“甚至在几年之内”;他对奥巴马政府阿富汗辩论中“曾经对他如此重要”的关键人物记忆“模糊”——拜登被发现保留了关于这一主题的文件，以帮助对他的角色进行历史复述。
表面上部分旨在解释缺乏刑事责任的细节近乎可笑。这份特别顾问的报告(包括大量照片)明确指出，拜登在特拉华州家中保存的一批阿富汗文件存放在“车库里一个严重损坏的箱子里，旁边有一个倒塌的狗箱、一张狗床、一个Zappos箱子、一个空桶、一个用胶带包裹的破灯、盆栽土和合成木柴。”
总统的法律团队进行了尖锐的反驳，抨击Hur使用“高度偏见的语言”来描述多年前发生的事件的模糊回忆。他们写给Hur的报告中充斥着细节，是“多余的”，没有说明拜登在10月7日哈马斯对以色列发动恐怖袭击后的几天里与Hur的团队坐在一起时相当忙碌的事实。
他们写道:“事实上，从你的采访中有充分的证据表明，总统在办公时间内回答了你关于多年前事件的问题。”“我们不认为报告对拜登总统记忆的处理是准确或恰当的。”
拜登本人周四晚间表示，他很高兴特别顾问的“事情现在已经结束”，没有提出任何指控。
总统在众议院民主党人的一次集会上表示:“我特别高兴地看到，特别顾问明确指出了本案与唐纳德·特朗普之间的明显差异。”
但前总统唐纳德·特朗普的盟友对Hur不起诉的决定表示反对，称这是刑事诉讼中的双重标准。他们忽略了Hur团队对特朗普案件的详细解释。特朗普的案件涉及拒绝移交机密文件的指控，以及阻碍国家档案馆获得机密文件的指控。这些指控显然与众不同，因此是悬而未决的刑事指控的主题。
在拜登案中，白宫从一开始就强调将与调查人员合作，拜登立即同意在发现文件后移交文件。
但与刑事指控相比，Hur对拜登的描述带有不同的政治刺痛。支持特朗普的超级政治行动委员会(super PAC)在一份声明中总结道:“如果你老得不能接受审判，那么你就老得不能当总统。”
最近越来越多的公开例子将这个问题置于聚光灯下。本周，奥巴马总统似乎忘记了发动对以色列袭击的恐怖组织哈马斯的名字，在回答记者提问时闪烁其词，几乎毫无意义。
最近几天，他两次讲述了他所说的最近与去世已久的欧洲领导人的对话。白宫决定放弃超级碗周日的采访——这曾经是一个轻松的总统传统，有望获得大量观众的支持——引发了关于助手是否在保护他免受自己伤害的问题。
长期以来，民调显示选民对拜登的心理能力相当担忧。美国广播公司新闻/华盛顿邮报投票9月份发现，四分之三的美国人认为拜登年龄太大，无法连任总统，而一半的人对特朗普持相同看法，特朗普年轻不到四岁。
明尼苏达州众议员迪恩·菲利普斯(Dean Phillips)可能是今年在总统初选中与拜登竞争的最可信的民主党人。本周，他在X上写道，他“因诚实和大声说出安静的部分而受到攻击”，并流传了总统在最近公开讲话中磕磕绊绊的片段。
菲利普斯写道:“我钦佩我们的总统。“但你们所有假装一切正常的人都很可耻。你正在把我们——还有他——带入一场灾难，你他妈的很清楚这一点。”
公众对拜登思维敏锐度的讨论发生在政治日历上的一个微妙时刻。提名过程进展顺利，选票截止日期很快过去，拜登轻松获胜。他在南卡罗来纳州获得了96%的选票，在内华达州获得了89%的选票，击败了菲利普斯和其他知名度较低的对手，甚至赢得了新罕布什尔州的书面选举，该州没有代表大会代表。
与此同时，特朗普正在凭借自己的权利获得共和党提名，尽管他担心法律问题可能会在多个方向上破坏他的竞选活动。前州长妮基·黑利是最后一位反对特朗普的共和党人，她质疑特朗普和拜登的年龄和能力，试图让自己重返竞选。
“我们都知道80岁的老人可以绕着我们转圈，”海利周二在X上写道，“然后我们知道特朗普和拜登。”
特朗普面临的法律困境并不等同于拜登面临的年龄问题。但就政治而言，这两者都很重要，特别是在一个分裂的国家，这两个候选人在2020年各自的竞选中名列前茅，他们似乎对复赛不感兴趣。
从功能上讲，拜登将成为民主党提名人，除非他决定让位-这是他没有表现出的倾向。
但是他对那些质疑他能力的人的长期回应——“看着我”——已经完全改变了。拜登现在的部分问题是他正在受到关注，更多的观察者和选民显然没有被他们所看到的所逼。
Special counsel blows open debate over Biden age and memory: ANALYSIS
The legal headline -- that President Joe Biden will not face prosecution in connection with his handling of classified documents, in stark contrast with the former president he is set to run against again -- is not what carries the political punch.
Instead, the special counsel's extended rationale for why Biden would likely not be convicted is what immediately stirred up fresh questions about the president's ability to continue to do the job.
Thereport from special counsel Robert Hurfound that "no criminal charges are warranted in this matter," despite evidence that Biden retained classified documents related to Afghanistan policy from his time as vice president, and even shared them with a ghostwriter to aid in his memoirs.
Things get worse from there in Hur's accounting, drawing specifically on the recorded interactions the president had, voluntarily, with the special counsel's office. In the interviews last October, the president had "limited precision and recall," according to Hur, who ultimately found that a jury would likely find Biden to be "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," Hur writes. "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."
Specifically, Hur writes that Biden, now 81, did not remember when his time as vice president either began or ended; did not recall the date of his son's death "even within several years"; and had a "hazy" memory about key players in the Obama administration's Afghanistan debate that was "once so important to him" – the subject on which Biden was found to have retained documents, to aid in a historical retelling of his role.
Details ostensibly meant in part to explain a lack of criminal liability border on mockery. The special counsel's report -- which includes ample photographs -- states flatly that a cache of Afghanistan documents Biden kept at his Delaware home were stored "in a badly damaged box in the garage, near a collapsed dog crate, a dog bed, a Zappos box, an empty bucket, a broken lamp wrapped with duct tape, potting soil, and synthetic firewood."
The president's legal team fired back with a sharp retort, slamming Hur for using "highly prejudicial language" to describe an understandably fuzzy recall of events that occurred years ago. Details peppered throughout the report, they wrote to Hur, were "superfluous" and do not account for the fact that Biden was quite busy when he sat with Hur's team, in the days just after the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel.
"In fact, there is ample evidence from your interview· that the President did well in answering your questions about years-old events over the course office hours," they wrote. "We do not believe that the report's treatment of President Biden's memory is accurate or appropriate."
President Joe Biden speaks during the annual House Democrats 2024 Issues Conference, on Feb. 8, 2...Show moreundefined
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Biden himself late Thursday said he was glad that the special counsel's "matter is now closed" without any charges being filed.
"I was especially pleased to see the special counsel made clear the stark differences between this case and Donald Trump," the president told a gathering of House Democrats.
But former President Donald Trump's allies jumped on Hur's decision not to prosecute as evidence, in their telling, of a double standard when it comes to criminal prosecution. They ignored the detailed explanation Hur's team included as to why Trump's case -- which involves accusations of refusing to turn over classified documents, and allegations of obstructing efforts to get them in the possession of the National Archives -- is demonstrably different, and thus the subject of pending criminal charges.
In the Biden case, the White House emphasized from the beginning it would cooperate with investigators and Biden immediately agreed to turn over documents when they were found.
But Hur's depictions of Biden carries a different political sting than even criminal charges might. The super PAC supporting Trump summed it up in a statement: "If you're too senile to stand trial, then you're too senile to be president."
More recent and more public examples have put the subject in the spotlight. This week, the president appeared to forget the name of Hamas, the terrorist group that launched the attack against Israel, in a meandering answer to a reporter's question that made little sense.
Twice in recent days he has recounted what he said were recent conversations -- with long-deceased European leaders. The White House's decision to forego a Super Bowl Sunday interview – once an easy presidential tradition that held the promise of reaching an enormous audience -- has raised questions about whether aides are protecting him from himself.
Polls have long shown considerable voter concern around Biden's mental abilities. An ABC News/Washington Postpollin September found three-quarter of Americans think Biden is too old to serve another term as president, while half say the same about Trump, who is less than four years younger.
Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips – arguably the most credible Democrat to run against Biden in the presidential primaries this year – this week wrote on X that he's being "attacked for being honest and saying the quiet part out loud," circulating clips of the president stumbling in recent public remarks.
"I admire our President," Phillips wrote. "But shame on all of you pretending everything is ok. You are leading us – and him – into a disaster, and you damn well know it."
The public discussion of Biden's mental acuity comes at a tenuous time in the political calendar. The nominating process is well underway, with ballot-access deadlines rapidly passing and with Biden romping. He got 96% of the vote in South Carolina and 89% in Nevada, against Phillips and other lower-profile opponents, and even won a write-in contest in New Hampshire, where no convention delegates were at stake.
Trump, meanwhile, is cruising to the Republican nomination in his own right, despite concerns about the legal issues that could derail his campaign in multiple directions. Former Gov. Nikki Haley – the last Republican standing against Trump – is questioning the age and abilities of both Trump and Biden in an effort to get herself back into contention.
"We all know 80-year-olds who can run circles around us," Haley wrote on X on Tuesday, "and then we know Trump and Biden."
The legal morass facing Trump is not equivalent to the questions about age facing Biden. But as a matter of politics, both matter, particularly in a divided country that seems unenthusiastic about a rematch between two candidates who topped their respective tickets in 2020.
Functionally, Biden will be the Democratic nominee unless he were to decide to step aside -- something he has shown no inclination to do.
But his longstanding rejoinder to those questioning his abilities -- "watch me" -- has been turned on its head. Part of Biden's problem now is that he is being watched, with more observers and voters apparently not compelled by what they see.
