Biden Lashes Out at Special Counsel for Raising Beau’s Death
Out of every detail listed in the 383-page special counsel report, it was the suggestion that President Biden had trouble remembering when his elder son, Beau, died that seemed to anger the president the most.
During a news conference just hours after the report was released, Mr. Biden appeared to struggle to keep his composure when recalling a line, on page 212 of the report, that suggested that “he did not remember, even within several years,” when his son died.
“I know there’s some attention paid to some language in the report about my recollection of events,” Mr. Biden said, his chin quivering either from anger or sadness. “There’s even a reference that I don’t remember when my son died. How in the hell dare he raise that?”
He said he had worn his son’s rosary “since the day he died.”
Beau Biden, who died of brain cancer in 2015, appears 16 times in the pages of the report prepared by Robert K. Hur, the special counsel appointed to investigate Mr. Biden’s handling of classified documents.
Investigators describe combing through boxes filled with mementos sent to the Bidens after Beau’s death. Mr. Biden had kept photos of his son on the campaign trail in a folder marked “Beau Iowa,” and had kept 28 boxes that “contained letters expressing condolences related to the death of Beau Biden,” according to the report.
Mr. Biden had also kept a folder with clippings labeled “Notable Stories on the Life of Beau Biden,” and an envelope labeled “Layout of Beau’s House,” which was described by an assistant to Mr. Biden as particularly important to him.
Investigators also focused on the notebooks Mr. Biden kept as vice president and found that some contained diarylike entries on “purely personal subjects, such as the illness and death of