Republican West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey urged Vice President Kamala Harris to invoke the 25th Amendment because President Joe Biden “has experienced a profound cognitive decline.”
In a letter Tuesday to Harris, Morrissey listed examples that Biden’s “mental struggles are real and pervasive.” He also referenced a poll about voters expressing concerns about Biden’s “mental and physical ability to continue as president” and Department of Justice special counsel Robert Hur’s report on Biden’s handling of classified documents, in which Hur noted Biden’s “diminished faculties and faulty memory” as a reason or not charging him. Biden, 81, is the oldest-serving president.
“Considering recent revelations in Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report, Americans should not be forced to swallow their concerns and stand by any longer,” Morrisey wrote. “I am writing to urge you to invoke your powers under Section 4 of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment and declare that President Biden is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”
The 25th Amendment was passed by Congress in July 1965 and ratified in February 1967 to clarify presidential succession following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Section 4 allows the vice president and the Cabinet to remove a president from office if they believe the president is deemed physically incapable of doing his job, with the vice president taking over.
Morrisey, who is campaigning to be West Virgnia’s governor as term-limited Gov. Jim Justice seeks a U.S. Senate seat, wrote that the amendment was “designed for times like these” and that its “central purpose was to preserve cognitive competence in the White House at all times.”
“We need a president who is mentally fit,” Morrisey wrote. “The demands placed on a president are intense, requiring continual cognitive clarity. He is often called on to make life-and-death decisions with little time. And in the wrong hands, the powers of the office could be dangerously abused.
“In short, it’s been said that ‘[w]e give the President more work than a man can do, more responsibility than a man should take, [and] more pressure than a man can bear.’ If that’s true for a healthy man, how can a man in decline hope to be up to the task?”
Harris, a former California attorney general and U.S. senator, slammed Hur’s report as “gratuitous” and “politically motivated.” But she also said two days before Hur’s report was released Thursday that “I am ready to serve. There’s no question about that.”
“I recognize that invoking the Twenty-Fifth Amendment is an extreme measure,” Morrisey wrote. “But if you can look beyond your personal relationship with the President and evaluate the situation objectively, I’m confident you’ll conclude that now is the time for extreme measures.”
Morrisey said if Harris believes Biden is mentally fit, she should call on Attorney General Merrick Garland to “pursue appropriate charges for the President’s willful mishandling of documents.”
“After all, the Special Counsel declined to prosecute in large part because he thought President Biden’s profound forgetfulness would make it hard to prove [knowledge of wrongdoing],” Morrisey wrote. “If President Biden is sharp enough to run a country, then he is sharp enough to act willfully. And as a former prosecutor, I expect that you want to see justice done in every case — even one involving a president.”
Newsmax reached out to the White House for comment.
Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/patrick-morrisey-kamala-harris-joe-biden/2024/02/13/id/1153459
