Ex-special Counsel Robert Hur will defend saying Biden has a bad memory when he ... trends now

Former special counsel Robert Hur will is giving high-stakes testimony on Capitol Hill on Tuesday on his devastating classified documents report that painted President Joe Biden as 'elderly' and 'forgetful' and with 'diminished faculties'. 

Hur was appointed special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland in January 2022 to investigate the president's handling of classified files based on a range of areas including Afghanistan.

Hur left the Justice Department on Monday and is testifying as a private citizen, DailyMail.com has confirmed. 

After a year of silence he released the explosive report that drew questions about his decision not to prosecute the president, Biden's cognitive fitness for office and how the commander-in-chief 'willfully' retained the documents. 

In interviews with investigators, Biden became muddled about the dates he was vice president and could not even remember the year in which his son Beau died. 

And it said his cavalier attitude to classified documents, such as his habit of reading sensitive files to a ghostwriter, posed a significant national security risk.

One of the reasons they decided not to press charges was because 'at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory'.

Now the Judiciary Committee will try to get clarity on his 338-page report, and Hur is set to double down on his criticism of Biden's memory, according to the opening statement obtained by DailyMail.com.

According to transcripts of Hur's interviews with Biden on October 8 and October 9, 2023, Biden's lawyer had to tell him what year his son Beau died of brain cancer and the president joked about the special counsel finding pictures of his wife in a swimsuit. 

'What month did Beau die?' Biden mused at one point, adding, 'Oh God, May 30th.' 

A White House lawyer then chimed in with the year, 2015.

'Was it 2015 he died?' Biden asked.

After the DOJ had searched his garage and office for classified documents, Biden joked to Hur: 'You left everything in place. I just hope you didn't find any risque pictures of my wife in a bathing suit. Which you probably did. She' s beautiful.'

According to his opening statement, Hur will argue: 'I understood that my explanation about this case had to include rigorous, detailed, and thorough analysis. 

'In other words, I needed to show my work,' he will say. 'I knew that for my decision to be credible, I could not simply announce that I recommended no criminal charges and leave it at that. I needed to explain why.'

Hur will add that he had to call Biden's memory into question and could not make a charging decision without assessing the 'President's state of mind'.

'For that reason, I had to consider the President's memory and overall mental state, and how a jury likely would perceive his memory and mental state in a criminal trial,' he'll say. 

'Because these issues were important to my ultimate decision, I had to include a discussion of them in my report.