Judicial Watch Sues Justice Department for Documents about Invoking 25th Amendment against President Biden

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the United States Department of Justice seeking access to the documents related to invoking the 25^th Amendment against President Joe Biden (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:24-cv-02764)).

On August 7, 2024, Judicial Watch submitted a FOIA request to the Justice Department for:

Records and communications of the below listed Department of Justice employees, including emails, email chains, email attachments, text messages, calendar invites, calendar meetings, correspondence, briefings, letters, memoranda, reports, notes, opinions, regarding invoking the 25th Amendment against President Joseph Biden.

• Merrick Garland, Attorney General
• Lisa O. Monaco, Deputy Attorney General
• Benjamin C. Mizer, Associate Attorney General
• Acting Associate Attorney General
• Christopher Fonzone, Assistant Attorney General
• Robert Hur, Special Counsel

On February 5, 2024, Special Counsel Robert Hur issued the “Report of the Special Counsel on the Investigation into Unauthorized Removal, Retention, and Disclosure of Classified Documents Discovered at Locations Including the Penn Biden Center and the Delaware Private Residence of President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.”

In the report, Hur called Biden a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” and declined to charge Biden with a “serious felony:”

We have also considered that, 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. Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him-by then a former president well into his eighties-of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.

On February 8, 2024, Congresswoman Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.) sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland where she stated:

After concluding that President Biden knowingly and willfully removed, mishandled, and disclosed classified documents repeatedly over a period of decades, Mr. Hur nevertheless recommended that charges not be brought against him.

Special Counsel’s reasoning was alarming. He recited numerous instances in which President Biden exhibited dramatically compromised mental faculties and concluded that a jury would be likely to perceive President Biden as a sympathetic and forgetful old man.

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It is incumbent upon you to explore proceedings to remove the President pursuant to the 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution. President Biden needs to be charged, or he needs to be removed. There is no middle ground.

“If President Biden is as mentally sound as he and the people around him maintain, why did he decide not to seek reelection? If he is an ‘elderly man with a poor memory,’ as Special Counsel Hur (for AG Garland) found, why has he not been removed under the 25^th Amendment? And why is the Justice Department unlawfully hiding documents about this serious national security issue?” asked Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

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