In Part One I explained the federal legal standard for determining if a person accused of a crime has the mental wherewithal (competency) to stand trial. I further opined that (based on over three decades as a prosecutor) Joe Biden was not competent to stand trial – and that I agreed with Special Prosecutor Rober Hur’s decision not to indict Biden for illegal handling of classified documents for that reason.
I then raised the obvious question: If Biden was incompetent to stand trial in February of 2024, when Hur made that decision, how was Biden competent to continue serving as President of the United States for another 11 months?
The 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution, proposed by Congress in 1965, and ratified by the States in 1967, includes a provision for a President to be removed from office,
“Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.”
No court, including the United States Supreme Court, has ever interpreted what that clause of the Amendment means. So – at least for now, “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office” means exactly what it says.
We are left with two possible explanations of how Joe Biden was able to remain in office despite being incompetent to stand trial.
Either Robert Hur, and the public, were simply mistaken about what we observed with our own eyes and ears about Joe Biden’s mental decline; or the “Vice President” and “principle officers of the executive department” were derelict in their duty to relieve Biden from the responsibilities of office.
Some politicians and media talking heads tried to gaslight us that what amounted to incompetency to stand trial, and the ability to carry out the duties of President of the United States, are entirely unrelated.
Of course those propounding that nonsense are the same ones who told us Biden was just fine mentally and that we the people should not believe our lyin’ eyes about what we could clearly see for ourselves. Any of us who’ve witnessed the mental decline of a family member knew exactly what was happening to Joe Biden.
Aside from insulting our intelligence, those who wanted us to believe Biden could still serve as President despite being incompetent to stand trial either don’t understand the standard of proof of incompetency — or they knew it and didn’t care, for political reasons.
Having extensive working experience with the standard to be found incompetent to stand trial, I can say that it’s magnitudes lower than “to discharge the powers and duties” of the President. If you aren’t mentally fit to stand trial, you damn sure aren’t fit to make critical decisions about the lives of American citizens, let alone to have your finger hovering over the button to launch nukes.
Take a look at these before and after photos of some of the men who held that office. It clearly ‘aged’ them – as is to be expected from a job of that intensity and stress.
For me, the two most dramatic changes are of Abraham Lincoln, and Woodrow Wilson. Wilson is particularly relevant to this discussion.
In October of 1919, Wilson had a stoke that incapacitated him. For the remainder of Wilson’s term in office there was, effectively, no President of the United States. The duties of the President were in the hands of his second wife, Edith, and his physician.
If you study the rationale for the 25th Amendment, the experience with Wilson was a factor — particularly in the nuclear age. The prospect of nuclear annihilation was in the forefront of public awareness.
Just two years before Congress proposed that Amendment the Cuban Missile Crisis had taken us to the brink of nuclear war. It was the willingness of President John Kennedy to oppose his military advisors that kept us from going over that brink.
Kennedy had learned his lesson about listening to those same advisors two years earlier in the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
Aside from the stark reality of the stand-off over Cuba, nuclear mistakes were then a part of the popular culture. The book “Fail Safe”, and the satirical movie “Dr Strangelove” were released in the years just before that Amendment was proposed.
When nuclear annihilation could be mere minutes away, the prospect of an incapacitated President, like Wilson, was unacceptable.
Now a century after Wilson, and half century after adoption of the 25th Amendment, insiders in the Biden administration are belatedly disclosing that Joe Biden’s second wife, Jill, was reprising the role of Edith Wilson, and for the same reason. A mentally incompetent President.
“Thy letters have transported me beyond
This ignorant present, and I feel now
The future in the instant.”
— -Lady Macbeth in Macbeth (Act 1, Scene 5) by William Shakespeare
The American people were gaslit about Biden’s mental decline by those same administration officials now revealing the truth. Those officials apparently are trying to re-claim some credibility by “revealing” what we could all see for ourselves, but which they tried to hide.
Even more repulsive is how some in the media aided and abetted misleading the public about Biden’s mental failing. The media cover-up has been exposed.
Perhaps that media duplicity explains the recent Rasmussen Poll which asked a question that declares what many of us have said for years,
“Do you agree or disagree with this statement: “No matter how much you hate the media it’s not enough”?
A majority of those who responded said they agree.
The finger-pointing is now in full force. Those in the media, who have been exposed for their gaslighting, are blaming officials in the Biden administration for misleading them.
Some of those administration officials are now claiming they were not aware because Jill Biden kept them away from the President.
Willful blindness – Deliberate avoidance of knowledge … by failing to make reasonable inquiry about suspected wrongdoing despite being aware that it is highly probable. Willful blindness creates an inference of knowledge.
— Black’s Law Dictionary