Jill Biden says special counsel report used Beau’s death to ‘score political points’

Jill Biden, the first lady, excoriated the special counsel’s report of President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents as a “political and personal” attack on her husband, and said Saturday evening that it had unnecessarily brought up the death of their son Beau.

Jill Biden, an ardent campaigner for her husband, wrote to supporters and shared what were her first public comments on the report since its release on Thursday.

“I don’t know what this special counsel was trying to achieve,” she wrote in a letter to supporters shared with The New York Times. “We should give everyone grace, and I can’t imagine someone would try to use our son’s death to score political points.”

The message from the first lady, which included a link to donate to the Biden campaign, is the first effort by the campaign to highlight the report’s mention of Beau. The first lady is a fundraising draw, according to the Democratic National Committee.

The first lady added in her letter that Beau’s death of brain cancer in 2015 “shattered me” and “shattered our family.” The president himself expressed similar sentiments Thursday when he lashed out at Robert Hur, the special counsel appointed to investigate Biden’s handling of classified documents.

The first lady is the latest member of the president’s inner circle to take aim at the report. Kamala Harris, the vice president and a former prosecutor, called the report politically motivated Friday.

Since Beau Biden’s death, the Bidens have woven his story into the president’s political messaging. During the 2020 campaign, when the country was reeling from the coronavirus pandemic, both Joe Biden and his wife said that his ability to overcome deep tragedy made him a more empathetic and resilient leader than then-President Donald Trump.