Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said Friday that Attorney General Merrick Garland should invoke the 25th Amendment if he declines to charge President Joe Biden for the president’s handling of classified documents.
Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report found that President Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen,” but that no criminal charges were warranted.
In deciding not to charge the president, Mr. Hur said that a jury likely wouldn’t convict the president in part because he would present himself as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
Commenting on the report, Mr. Hawley told Fox News on Feb. 9 that he believes the attorney general should act in accordance with the provisions outlined in the U.S. Constitution.
“I’m calling on [Mr. Garland] publicly now to do what I think is required under the law in the Constitution … either charge the president, or he will go to the cabinet and tell them: ‘I believe we have to invoke the 25th Amendment.’ He’s got to do one or the other,” the senator said.
“If he doesn’t, it will just confirm what everybody thinks, which is that there are two tiers of justice and that Garland himself is completely complicit in the corruption of this administration,” he added.
Mr. Hawley highlighted that the special counsel has decided not to press charges despite concluding there were “elements of a crime” in President Biden’s handling of classified documents.
“He concluded that the elements of a crime were present, namely that the president had willfully retained and disclosed classified information, so he knew it. I mean, the report makes it very clear he knew that it was classified information, this was done over years and decades—not just a couple of months—and he willfully did it.
“But he ultimately recommends against prosecution, not because he didn’t do it, but because, basically, Biden is mentally unfit to be prosecuted. Because he doesn’t think that he can get a jury to ultimately convict, because the president is so mentally unstable,” he said.
Mr. Hawley said that Mr. Garland, having the ultimate authority on whether to agree or disagree with Mr. Hur’s decision, should invoke the 25th Amendment if he chooses not to press charges against the president.
“It can’t be … ‘He’s totally fit to continue in office, but we’re not going to prosecute him.’ I mean, that’s just—that would be the most brazen miscarriage of justice and degradation of the rule of law,” he added.
25th Amendment
The 25th Amendment lays out the constitutional process for removing a president who has been deemed unable to discharge the responsibilities of his office.
The amendment can be invoked by the vice president and a majority of the president’s cabinet—“or of such other body as Congress may by law provide”—by transmitting their written declaration of the president’s incapacity to president pro tempore of the Senate and the speaker of the House. At that point, the vice president would assume the office of acting president.
Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.) has also issued a letter to Mr. Garland calling for President Biden’s removal from office via the 25th Amendment. She said that Mr. Hur’s reasoning not to press charges was “alarming.”
“I need not tell you that selective prosecution is morally, ethically, and legally prohibited,” Ms. Tenney wrote. “We don’t prosecute or decline to prosecute people based on their personalities, or on the public’s anticipated perception of them. If Special Counsel finds that the evidence forms a reasonable basis to bring charges, he must do so.”
The decision also exposes an inconsistency in the Justice Department’s treatment of President Biden and former President Donald Trump, who is currently being prosecuted by special counsel Jack Smith in a very similar case.
Ms. Tenney, noting this disparity, wrote, “The Department of Justice cannot ethically bring charges against former president Trump because he has mental acuity and a forceful personality and decline to bring charges against President Biden because of his cognitive decline. President Biden needs to be charged. Unless he is not mentally competent to stand trial.”
Samantha Flom contributed to this report.
“a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
“But he ultimately recommends against prosecution, not because he didn’t do it, but because, basically, Biden is mentally unfit to be prosecuted. Because he doesn’t think that he can get a jury to ultimately convict, because the president is so mentally unstable,”
President Biden needs to be charged. Unless he is not mentally competent to stand trial.
Now do we really want the nuclear codes to be controlled by a not mentally competent puppet president Joe Obiden??
Where have I heard this before?
“Hillary Clinton Has Admitted To Destroying Evidence”
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: She is in trouble legally if there is a prosecutor with the courage or authority to prosecute her because in addition to admitting that she diverted government records from the government, in addition to admitting that she put classified information in a non-classified venue, that is the crime in which General Petraeus has agreed to plead guilty to. She now has admitted to destroying subpoenaed evidence after she was on notice of the existence subpoena. That’s known as obstruction of justice as well as destruction of the documents. But none of her crimes will get to first base in terms of prosecution without a prosecutor to pursue them…
Hillary Clinton is once again being allowed to skate, even though the head of the very body tasked with investigating her — the FBI — has detailed precisely how Clinton did in fact break the law.
FBI Director James Comey laid out, with specificity, how Clinton violated our national security laws, but then he proceeded to explain that he was nevertheless declining to refer Clinton for federal prosecution.
Actually, Biden’s offenses fall under the judiciary’s double standards clause, but the prosecutor didn’t want to come right out and say the truth!
But as we keep hearing, Orange Man Bad, so Trump will be hounded until he drops dead from the official persecution!
Expecting “Garland to do the right thing”, is as foolish as expecting a RABID WOLF to not attack you..
If he is ‘mentally unfit’ then what the h-ll is he doing there ???
What the H*ll is he doing there?
Whatever Obama tells him to do.
DEMS Want him there… As a useful puppet.
Sen. Hawley Says AG Garland Should ‘Either Charge’ Biden Or Invoke 25th Amendment”,,,,,,a polite way to tell him to poop or get off the pot. He forgets he is dealing with another Obama nominated pot head who like 120 or so Obama appointments had to get special dispensation to waive the drug tests in order to be able to work at the Whitehouse. These are also the potheads who believe when they throw we citizen taxpayer Frogs into their “Double, double, toil and trouble, / Fire burn and toilets bubble” political hot pots of incompetence and lawbreaking they think we will just sit still in their socialist septic fields waiting for their swamp snakes to eat us, where the real test is whether Joe will sink or swim in a Whitehouse swimming pool naked, which is angling Joe’s way of trolling for a vote, but the exposed bait proves too small to attack the fish
Come on Josh, that would require actually fallowing the law and common sense, we no longer do that in Washington DC!
Unless its against Republicans, then they are ALL TOO SWIFT TO ‘follow the law’.
Mentally unfit ??? Is that why can’t understand the border crisis ??? Is that why he can’t understand the criminal crisis ????
The scary thing about all of this is the people in the west wing that knows the scam that is playing out on the people of the United States and is saying nothing!!!!! Who is really in control of the nuclear football????
Tell me its not kammeltoe..
The entire Biden administration is corrupt and incompetent. At this point you got to ask yourself who shouldn’t be impeached in this anti-American administration. Seeing what is happening in Washington today makes calling it a swamp a discredit to swamps. Every federal agency and bureaucrat needs to be slapped back into the reality that they work for the American people and reminded under no uncertain terms the Constitution isn’t a suggestion it’s their bible.
AND if the GOP Is unwilling to impeach any of them, WHY? ARE THEY THAT SPINELESS or useless? THEN IF That’s the case, why should any republican voter, EVER AGAIN VOTE for a single one of them?
So, too feeble to stand trial but not too feeble to be President of our country. Are all the politicians in DC too feeble to understand what this means? What is wrong with the republican party Trump is on trial and attacked 24/7 by dems for anything they can come up with and you cowards stand by and do nothing with all the proof of bidens wrongdoing. You look like fools, as for anyone who sees nothing wrong in what’s taking place you may be too feeble to vote or make any real judgements about what’s going on. As for msm same as always not a real journalist anywhere just agenda driven cheerleaders. IMO
Only certain party members are above the law no matter what trump says.