Jill Biden in disbelief special counsel used son’s death to ‘score political points’

First lady Jill Biden has expressed disbelief that the author of the US justice department’s report clearing her husband of criminal charges over his handling of classified documents prior to his presidency would invoke the death of the couple’s son “to score political points”.

“Believe me, like anyone who has lost a child, Beau and his death [in 2015] never leave him,” she wrote late Saturday in an email to donors supporting Joe Biden’s re-election campaign, days after special counsel Robert Hur’s report asserted that the president could not remember when his and Jill Biden’s son died.

“If you’ve experienced a loss like that, you know that you don’t measure it in years – you measure it in grief. … So many of you know that feeling after you lose a loved one, where you feel like you can’t get off the floor. What helped me, and what helped Joe, was to find purpose. That’s what keeps Joe going, serving you and the country we love.”

The first lady, with her email, joined a chorus of critics who have condemned Hur for dedicating large portions of his report – which failed to produce an indictment – to Biden’s age and purportedly fading memory. That was “flatly inconsistent with longstanding [justice department] traditions”, former US attorney general Eric Holder said of Hur’s report.

Jill Biden’s email on Saturday avoided explicitly naming Hur, who was chosen for the role of Maryland’s US attorney by Donald Trump, whom Joe Biden defeated in the 2020 election and is seeking a second presidency. But she wrote that she felt it was necessary “not just as Joe’s wife, but as Beau’s mother” to address “this special counsel” whom Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, had appointed to investigate the president.

“I hope you can imagine