Jill Biden came out fighting after the special counsel’s scathing report into her husband’s memory, saying claims that Joe forgot his son Beau’s death were meant to “score political points.”
“Believe me, like anyone who has lost a child, Beau and his death never leave you,” the First Lady said in a statement shared by a campaign account.
The statement came in response to special counsel Robert K. Hur’s conclusion that Biden should not be charged for mishandling classified documents, but only because a jury would not convict him because he would appear as “a sympathetic, well-intentioned old man with a bad memory.’
But the argument that President Biden could not forget the tragic death of his son challenges the public gaffes he has made on the issue in the past.
This included a June 2023 rally, when Biden claimed that he and Jill “lost our son in Iraq,” even though Beau died in Maryland in 2015 from brain cancer.
First Lady Jill Biden defended allegations that President Biden forgot his son Beau’s death in interviews with a special prosecutor, saying, “Believe me, like anyone who has lost a child, Beau and his death never leave you.” The three appear together in 2012.
Beau served in Iraq and may have contracted the disease from exposure to “burn pits” where toxic military material is incinerated.
But the Bidens’ critics are likely to accuse Jill of hypocrisy for choosing to focus on specific details when her husband had previously paid lip service to them.
In her statement shared Saturday night, the First Lady began: ‘Friends, I have heard many of you ask about this week’s Special Counsel report. Thank you for your love and support.’
He said viewers “probably know the basics” of the case, that the president “cooperated fully with the special counsel’s investigation and they found that he did nothing wrong.”
“Criminal charges were not warranted,” he said, referring to a opinion article by historian Heather Cox Richardson who stated that the prosecutor’s report “amounted to a partisan coup.”
But Jill said the conclusion was not the reason for her statement: what she called “personal and inaccurate political attacks on Joe.”
‘Rather than simply saying the case was closed, as they have done with others, the special prosecutor claimed that Joe ‘could not remember the year his son died.’
Believe me, like anyone who has lost a child, Beau and his death never leave you.
“I hope you can imagine how you felt reading that attack, not only as Joe’s wife, but as Beau’s mother.”
He continued: ‘I don’t know what this special prosecutor was trying to achieve. We should give everyone grace, and I can’t imagine anyone trying to use our son’s death to score political points.
The First Lady responded to special counsel Robert K. Hur’s (pictured) conclusion that Biden should not be charged with mishandling classified documents, but only because a jury would not convict him because he would appear as “a sympathetic and well-off elderly man.” deliberate”. man with bad memory
‘If you’ve experienced a loss like that, you know that you don’t measure it in years, but in pain.
‘May 30 is a day forever etched in our hearts. It destroyed me, it destroyed our family.
The statement’s response to the prosecutor’s scathing report comes less than a year after Biden publicly spoke poorly about how Beau died.
At a rally in the Rocky Mountains, North Carolina, in June 2023, Biden incorrectly claimed that he ran for president while serving as Barack Obama’s vice president, before claiming that Beau died while serving in Iraq.
Speaking about reports that he had not planned to run for president again, Biden told the crowd: ‘You know, the bottom line is this: I ran for president, I ran for president for one basic reason.
‘I ran when I was vice president, and then Barack and I spent eight years together, and then the new administration came along, and in the meantime, things changed in our lives and in our family.
‘I lost my son; We lost our son in Iraq. I hadn’t planned to apply anyway.
Biden had previously made similar claims that his son died while serving in Iraq.
Biden is seen visiting his son, U.S. Army Capt. Beau Biden, at Camp Victory, outside Baghdad, July 4, 2009. Beau served in the Delaware Army National Guard before launching his own career policy.
It is true that Beau had served in Iraq, deployed and rose to the rank of major in the Delaware Army National Guard from 2008 to 2009.
He returned before launching his own political career, serving as Attorney General of Delaware and planning to run for Governor of Delaware before dying of brain cancer in 2015.
President Biden has maintained that there is a strong possibility that Beau’s brain cancer was caused by exposure to burned graves while in Iraq.
Jill Biden concluded her statement by noting that she and President Biden only got through the difficult time of their son’s death by finding purpose.
‘Many of you know that feeling after losing a loved one, where you feel like you can’t get up off the ground.
‘What helped me and Joe was finding purpose. “That’s what keeps Joe serving you and the country we love.”
He then referred to his age and responded that experience should be perceived as one of President Biden’s strongest assets.
‘Joe is 81, that’s true, but he does more in an hour than most people do in a day. Joe has wisdom, empathy and vision.
‘He has fulfilled many of his promises as president precisely because he has learned a lot in those 81 years.
“His age, experience and knowledge are an incredible asset and he proves it every day.”
Jill said her son’s death “destroyed me, it destroyed our family.”
The First Lady listed several of these accomplishments, including “getting our country out of COVID,” “creating 14 million jobs,” and passing bipartisan legislation “even in the midst of this hyperpartisan environment.”
‘The media may not give him credit, but I appreciate that they realize everything he has done for this country.
‘Joe is the most resilient person I have ever met. When he gets knocked down, he gets up and goes back to work. That’s what he’s doing.
After thanking Democratic supporters for their support, he concluded: ‘At some point in our lives, we will all experience pain and loss. We will go through challenging times and twists and turns.
“But together we find joy, we persevere together, and ultimately we will prevail together.”
Beau’s biological mother was Neilia Hunter, who died in a car accident along with her one-year-old daughter Naomi in December 1972.
Beau and his younger brother Hunter, both young children at the time, were also in the car when it was hit by a truck and were also injured.
Joe met Jill on a blind date in 1975 and the couple married two years later.
The couple welcomed a daughter, Ashley Biden, in 1981.