'Beyond the pale': Why Jill Biden stepped into a more public role responding to the special counsel's report

WASHINGTON — First lady Jill Biden was deeply offended and personally motivated to issue a response after special counsel Robert Hur released his report last week alleging that the president could not remember when their son died and struggled to recall other key details, according to two people familiar with the discussions.

As Joe Biden’s wife for more than 46 years, she is considered the president’s most trusted adviser and fiercest defender. That’s why, the people said, she played a role in crafting a deeply personal statement that the Biden re-election campaign shared Saturday evening, a rare occurrence among the more standard campaign correspondence to supporters.

In the email, the first lady called the criticism of the president’s memory “inaccurate” and nothing more than “personal political attacks.”

“I don’t know what this Special Counsel was trying to achieve,” she wrote. “We should give everyone grace, and I can’t imagine someone would try to use our son’s death to score political points. If you’ve experienced a loss like that, you know that you don’t measure it in years — you measure it in grief. May 30th is a day forever etched on our hearts. It shattered me, it shattered our family.”

Jill Biden’s message Saturday quickly raised more money than any other email the campaign has sent out since the president launched his re-election campaign in April, a campaign official said. The person would not disclose how much it raised.

The lengthy statement did not include a specific financial ask to supporters, but it did include a donate button at the end of the note, which was signed: “Love, Jill.”

A person close to the first lady said she wanted to put the reference to Beau Biden’s death in “real American mom