Joe Biden

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Two men three years apart’: Democrats highlight Trump’s mental lapses after Biden report

      by

      The special counsel Robert Hur’s contention that Joe Biden suffers from memory problems caused by advanced age prompted delight among the president’s Republican opponents – and pushback from Democrats pointing out how often Donald Trump has his own lapses, and how dangerous they are to the country.Speaking on MSNBC amid shockwaves from the release of Hur’s report on Biden’s retention of classified information after his time as a senator and as vice-president, Jen Psaki, Biden’s first White House press secretary, emphasised: “The choice in all likelihood here is going to be between two men who are three years apart.”Already the oldest president ever, Biden is 81 and would be 86 at the end of a second term. Trump, the probable Republican presidential nominee this year, will turn 78 in June.Biden’s gaffes – including calling the president of Egypt the president of Mexico in the same Thursday remarks in which he angrily attacked Hur – are relentlessly scrutinised.To some extent, so are those of Trump – who recently confused Viktor Orbán, prime minister of Hungary, with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, president of Turkey. He also confused Nikki Haley, his last remaining rival for the Republican nomination, with Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic House speaker when Trump sent a mob to attack Congress on 6 January 2021.But despite Trump’s frequent mistakes, polling has consistently shown that more Americans think Biden is too old than think the same about Trump.This week, before the release of Hur’s report, the progressive political strategist Rachel Bitecofer said: “Polling data consistently shows that its Biden, not Trump, voters perceive as having mental decline. No, REALLY. The reason is, Republicans have been pounding that false narrative hard since 2020 using [Biden’s] stuttering clips. We need CONSTANT coverage of Trump’s decline across all media outlets to fix that.”On Thursday, Psaki said Biden and Trump “are both older than I would think a lot of people in the public would like … [but] the choice is ultimately going to be between somebody who – in the Biden campaign, this is what they’ll argue – was guilty of trying to overturn the election, overturn the will of voters, and somebody who was not. And they’re three years apart.“People have concern about age, have concern about whether Biden’s up to the job … There is an element of that that has existed for years, and some of it was pushed by the right wing effectively … despite the fact that Trump is only a little bit younger.”The Biden campaign, Psaki added, “need[s] to figure out ways to address that, including having him out in the country, having him out on the trail”.Psaki’s host, Katy Tur, responded: “I covered Donald Trump really closely [in 2016] and when I see him now, he is a lot different than he was eight years ago. He is not the same candidate that he was.”That seems evident to most observers – and the issue has not been absent from the Republican primary.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHaley, who made a call for age limits for public office a central plank of her campaign, has said Trump is “just not at the same level” as he was while president.“Are we really gonna go into a situation where we have wars around the world and we’re trying to prevent war, and we’re gonna have someone who we can or can’t be sure that they’re gonna get confused?” the 51-year-old former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador told CBS last month.At a New Hampshire rally, she added: “Do we really want to go into an election with two fellas that are gonna be president in their 80s? And that’s not ageism that I’m saying here … when you’re dealing with the pressures of a presidency, we can’t have someone else that we question whether they’re mentally fit to do this.”Trump himself has addressed the subject – if by inviting widespread mockery with boasts about acing basic cognitive tests while in the White House.In New Hampshire last month, Trump told supporters: “I think it was 35, 30 questions. They always show you the first one, like a giraffe, a tiger, or this, or that – a whale. ‘Which one is the whale?’ OK. And that goes on for three or four [questions] and then it gets harder and harder and harder.”The Canadian creator of the test in question, the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, told the Washington Post it had never included a drawing of a whale.For the Biden campaign, and for Democrats in general, the challenge now is to get more Americans to read such stories. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Democrats work on damage control after Biden’s fiery surprise speech

      by

      Democrats and their allies were shaping a damage control response on Friday to a hastily organized White House press call the night before that appeared to fall short in its mission to reassure voters about Joe Biden’s mental acuity after it was harshly questioned in a prosecutor’s report about his having kept classified documents at the end of his vice-presidency.Biden already said that his interview with the special counsel Robert Hur last October – in which he was reported to have forgotten the year his son Beau died and precisely when he had been vice-president – came in the days straight after Hamas attacked southern Israel, when Biden was preoccupied with the US response.Hur’s report concluded on Thursday that Biden would not face criminal charges in the case, despite “willfully” retaining and disclosing classified material, which he would not be open to as a sitting president anyway but also would not be warranted even if he was no longer president.But Hur then went on to describe at length how he found the US president’s memory to be failing, prompting anger from Biden and, in the following hours and into Friday, Democrats and aides to come to his defense.“The way that the president’s demeanor in that report was characterized could not be more wrong on the facts and clearly politically motivated,” Kamala Harris told MSNBC on Friday.The vice-president slammed claims of Biden’s failing mental acuity made in the 388-pages report as “gratuitous, inaccurate and inappropriate”.Earlier, Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin from the crucial swing state of Wisconsin addressed the conclusions by special counsel Robert Hur that the 81-year-old president’s recall was “significantly limited”, and that Hur would not bring charges over classified documents in part because jurors would see the US president not as a willful criminal but as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory”.“I judge a president on what they’ve done and whose side they’re on,” Baldwin told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. She pointed to Biden’s “strong record of creating good-paying jobs, rebuilding our infrastructure, and lowering prescription drug prices”.Tommy Vietor, a former Obama administration staffer, wrote on X that the prosecutor’s comments were “just a rightwing hit job from within Biden’s own DOJ. Wild.”On MSNBC, which often previews the Democratic party line, the host Joe Scarborough addressed the conclusions by the special counsel that the president’s recall was “significantly limited” and he would not bring charges over classified documents in part because jurors would see Biden as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory”, not a criminal.“So bizarre,” Scarborough said. “Why in the world would [Hur] put his neurological assessment of Joe Biden in his report, and why would [US attorney general] Merrick Garland release garbage like that in a justice department report?”Dan Goldman, the Democratic congressman from New York, told the station that he did not have “any concerns” about Biden’s age or ability. “Remember, the job of the president is to guide our country. It is not to be a cheerleader for the United States. It is to govern our country,” he said.Referring to missing Hillary Clinton emails that became an issue on the eve of the 2016 election, Scarborough added: “It sure sounds like James Comey in 2016 when he couldn’t indict Hillary Clinton legally so he indicted her politically.”Vietor echoed that line, claiming Hur had “clearly decided to go down the Jim Comey path of filling his report absolving Biden of criminal activity with ad hominem attacks”.The long-shot Democratic primary challenger Dean Phillips, who is campaigning against Biden, said Hur’s report had “all but handed the 2024 election to Donald Trump”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The report simply affirms what most Americans already know, that the President cannot continue to serve as our Commander-in-Chief beyond his term ending January 20, 2025,” Phillips said in a statement.Behind closed doors, some Democrats expressed mounting concerns about a re-election narrative that focuses on Biden’s age. “It’s a nightmare,” a Democratic House member reportedly told NBC News. “It weakens President Biden electorally, and Donald Trump would be a disaster and an authoritarian.”“For Democrats, we’re in a grim situation,” the anonymous source reportedly added.Biden hit back at Hur’s characterization of his mental condition during a surprise press conference at the White House on Thursday evening. The president maintained that his memory was “just fine” and in a tense exchange said “I know what the hell I’m doing” and that remarks about his memory had “no place in this report”.“My memory is fine,” Biden said. “Take a look at what I’ve done since I’ve become president.”“For any extraneous commentary, they don’t know what they’re talking about,” he added. “It has no place in this report.”At the end of the interview, he referred to Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, as the “president of Mexico” in a response to a reporter’s query about the current situation in the Middle East. The error came after two other public gaffes this week in which Biden claimed to have spoken recently with two long-dead European leaders, Germany’s Helmut Kohl and France’s François Mitterrand.Polling has consistently shown that concerns about Biden’s age are seen as his greatest political liability in a rematch with Donald Trump.A poll by NBC News last month found that 76% of voters had major or moderate concerns when asked whether Biden has “the necessary mental and physical health to be president for a second term”. Asked the same question about the 77-year-old Trump, 48% said they had major or moderate concerns. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Special counsel report on Biden a ‘partisan hit job’, Democrats say

      by

      Joe Biden, senior aides and political observers strongly criticised the special counsel, Robert Hur, for extensively discussing the president’s age and allegedly fading memory in his report on Biden’s retention of classified information from his time as a senator and as vice-president – which did not produce an indictment.Hur, who Donald Trump appointed US attorney for Maryland, “could not refrain from investigative excess”, said Bob Bauer, Biden’s personal counsel.Though this was “perhaps unsurprising given the intense pressures of the current political environment”, Bauer added, the final report “flouts Department [of Justice] regulations and norms”.Others raised the spectre of James Comey, the FBI director who in 2016 investigated Hillary Clinton over her use of private email in office. Declining to indict, Comey chose instead to publicly cast doubt on Clinton’s character, an act widely held to have helped tip the election to Trump.Speaking to Politico, an unnamed top Biden campaign official said Hur’s report “felt like a Comey moment”, as the special counsel had put his “thumb on the scale during an election season”.Dan Pfeiffer, a Barack Obama adviser turned commentator, called Hur’s report “a partisan hit job”.The oldest US president ever, Biden is now 81 and would be 86 by the end of a second term. Polling shows most Americans think he is too old.In late 2022, as Trump faced his own special counsel investigation regarding retention of classified information, Biden was discovered to have retained materials from his time as a senator from Delaware and as vice-president to Obama.Hur was appointed special counsel by Merrick Garland, the US attorney general. Then in private practice but also a former principal associate deputy attorney general, Hur was described by Andrew McCabe, a former FBI deputy director, as a “well-informed, industrious, hard-working guy”.A little over a year later, on Thursday, Hur issued his 388-page report.Biden’s memory “appeared to have significant limitations”, it said, also suggesting Biden would appear to any jury as “a well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory”.“He did not remember when he was vice-president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended … and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began,” Hur wrote.“He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died. And his memory appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him.”Trump – the probable Republican presidential nominee who at 77 faces his own doubts about mental fitness, even if fewer Americans say he is too old – seized on Hur’s report, particularly in the context of his own problems regarding classified records, the subject of 40 of 91 criminal charges across four cases.Some Trump allies called for the use of the 25th amendment to the US constitution, providing for the removal of a president deemed incapable.Biden reacted furiously. Regarding the claim he couldn’t remember the year (2015) of the death of his older son, the former Delaware attorney general Beau Biden, the president said: “How in the hell dare [Hur] raise that. Frankly … I thought to myself it wasn’t any of their damn business. I don’t need anyone to remind me when he passed away.“The simple truth is, I sat for a five-hour interview over two days of events going back 40 years. At the same time, I was managing an international crisis [the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October].“I’m well-meaning and I’m an elderly man and I know what the hell I’m doing. I’ve been president and I put this country back on its feet. I don’t need his recommendation.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHur’s “extraneous commentary” had “no place in this report”, Biden added.Bauer elaborated: “The [DoJ] inspector general observed only a few years ago that high-profile investigations, such as those of a president, may be ‘subject to scrutiny not typical of the average criminal case, but that does not provide a basis for violating well-established department norms, and, essentially, ‘trashing’ the subject of an investigation’ with extraneous, unfounded and irrelevant critical commentary.“The inspector general added that it ‘violate[s] long-standing department practice and protocol’ to ‘criticise uncharged conduct’. The special counsel report fails that test as well.”Hur, Bauer said, “had no choice but to find that criminal charges were not warranted. He had other choices, which should have been guided by the department’s rules, policies, and practices, and he made the wrong ones.”The MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, an ex-Republican congressman, accused Hur of “irrelevant … politically charged, Trump-like ramblings”.“It sure sounds like James Comey, who couldn’t indict Hillary Clinton illegally so he decided to hold a press conference and indict her politically.”In his Message Box newsletter, Pfeiffer said the report was “very bad and poses some real political peril”.But he added: “Robert Hur is described in press reports as a ‘well-respected US attorney’ – and maybe he once was. But this report is a partisan hit job. He swerves out of his lane to drive a negative narrative about Biden, the same message the Republican party uses against Biden … generously describ[ing] memory lapses from others but hammer[ing] Biden for the same.“It’s hard to read the report and not think that, without the ability to charge Biden with a crime, Hur wanted to damage him politically.”Pfeiffer added: “If Biden acts like Hur says, we would all know. Biden meets with dozens of people daily … if [he] was regularly misremembering … or making other mistakes that suggested he was not up to the job, it would be in the press. Washington is not capable of keeping something like that secret.”Speaking to Politico, the unnamed Biden official said the campaign would seek to portray Hur as “a Maga guy”, meaning a Trump loyalist, but acknowledged that public perceptions about the president’s age persist.“The fact that he’s a senior citizen is not going to go away,” the Biden official said. More

    • 288 Shares109 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump is too old and incited a coup. Biden is too old and mixes up names. America, how to choose? | Marina Hyde

      by

      To the US, where one likely candidate for the presidency delivers hour-long rambling speeches in which he explains that he’s going to be a dictator, but all the chat is about whether the other candidate has lost his marbles. And yes, let me pre-emptively apologise, because I can already tell that we will only be on about the third paragraph of this column before I have exhausted the Guardian’s approved list of euphemisms for being a couple of world leaders’ names short of a full set.Anyway, our business today is with the president, Joe Biden, who called an impromptu press conference on Thursday night in which he hotly insisted that his memory was just fine. The occasion was the publication of a justice department report that cleared Biden of criminal charges over his handling of highly classified materials. This year-long investigation was carried out by special counsel Robert Hur, who happens to be a registered Republican, and whose report specifically mentions the president’s “significantly limited” memory. Mr Hur says that part of the reason he didn’t bring charges was 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.” Oh dear. A real muffin-basket of an attack-line gifted to Donald Trump there, and confirmation of my long-held conviction that fake sympathy is far deadlier a tone than open attack.Biden had almost left the stage last night when he returned to the podium to take a question on the Israel-Gaza conflict, in which he unfortunately referred to the Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as “the Mexican president”. On the one hand, this was always going to happen just at the moment he was insisting his memory was great, just as it is a truth universally acknowledged that people correcting someone else’s grammar or spelling will normally involuntarily commit some howler of their own in the process. Call it the pedants’ curse – or indeed, the pedant’s curse.On the other hand … oh dear. According to polling, Biden’s age and cognitive glitches are his biggest vulnerability with voters. As for his likely opponent, for my armchair diagnosis, the most terrifying thing about Donald Trump is that he is completely sane (unless you count advanced narcissism, which I suppose we have to these days). But Trump is a mere three years younger than Biden, often walks with a wobble, and himself recently confused Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi in a rant. So is it fair that the one should face infinitely more scrutiny on the lost-plot front than the other?Alas, fairness isn’t one of the base notes of political life. I’m afraid we could be dealing with Ye Olde Vibes Theory of Politics (est 2022), which holds that the feels-based way in which a politician presents is more important than such trivialities as the facts or their record. Listen – I don’t make the rules. But during the first 2022 Conservative leadership contest in the UK, remainer Liz Truss presented as more Brexity to the party grassroots than leaver Rishi Sunak. Why? Vibes. Just … vibes.The vibes on Biden’s seniority are not great. Yes, he has led his country’s exceptional and internationally envied economic recovery from the pandemic, so the large rational part of me judges that unfair. But another part of me, perhaps the irrational, can no longer watch any Biden speech or address without picturing his aides also watching backstage, mainlining cortisol, every fibre of their brace-positioned beings willing him to get over the line without making any unforced errors – and to then exit the stage without trying to use a flag as a door.I’m sure this is complete fantasy and the only cortisol levels going through the roof are my own. Nevertheless: vibes. Can’t fight ’em. I remember my heart feeling similarly in my mouth during the aforementioned Tory leadership contest when runaway favourite Truss walked the wrong way off stage after her campaign launch. Did I think Liz Truss literally wasn’t even up to finding her way off a stage? Of course not. Rationally, I knew it was just a silly mistake, of the sort that all of us make every day. At the same time, the irrational half of me felt the satisfying click of the right key turning in the lock. I knew that Liz Truss metaphorically wasn’t even up to finding her way off a stage. There was some kind of ineffable psychological truth to it all that was far more powerful than the facts.As someone who believes the likely Republican candidate is hideously, overwhelmingly worse, I fear that Joe Biden is gearing up for a gruelling election at precisely this vibes-based disadvantage. Both he and Trump are at the stage of life when sensible ordinary people find the strength to turn to their families and ask: be honest, should I still be driving? Yet Trump’s great power is defying rationality, like some dark lord of the vibes. He is possessed of a mesmerising ability to make every single thing feel like it is playing into his hands, which is why we now all watch news reports of various criminal charges being brought against him and go, “Oh this’ll play well for him”. Will it? And if so, why should it? Who really knows, but the vibes say so.After the last time I touched on the gerontocracy in these pages, the Guardian printed three letters from older male readers under the headline, What’s age got to do with it, Marina Hyde? Ageism was mentioned, with one of the correspondents advancing details of how he spent his days, as an argument against what we might kindly have termed my own argument about when big hitters should leave the professional stage. Now, no one more than me welcomes a good bollocking on the letters page, and all the three men were very nice about the rest of my output. Thank you!However. At the risk of drawing further correspondence, I feel I still have to hold to the position that being president of the United States is not the same as “writing, teaching, and volunteering in a residential home”, and is a job for a younger man than either Biden and Trump. Not a younger woman, of course – that would be genuinely insane in the strictest clinical sense of the term. But younger than 86 at conclusion of office. So I end this column with a challenge: if any readers of this newspaper are able to get to the end of the lengthy forthcoming US election campaign and think it showcased a vibrant, healthy and sprightly democracy, then I urge them to write in on 6 November, and suggest mandatory retirement for me.
      Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist More

    • 88 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Who tanked the border bill? – podcast

      by

      Illegal immigration via the US-Mexico border remains one of the most pressing problems for Congress. And yet the much anticipated $118bn border security bill, which included aid packages to Ukraine and Israel, was blocked by senators after a chaotic week.
      Why did this crucial piece of legislation with bipartisan support get rejected by the very people who demanded it? This week, Joan E Greve is joined by Marianna Sotomayor, the congressional reporter for the Washington Post, to discuss why the border bill failed

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

    • 175 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden was in a fighting mood for surprise speech – but he didn’t win

      by

      It came out of the blue. The White House announced that Joe Biden would deliver remarks at 7.45pm – giving the press just 23 minutes to prepare. What the sudden speech would be about, no one knew. The element of surprise and uncertainty was reminiscent of the Donald Trump era.As it happened, many White House correspondents were at a meeting near the Watergate building about a mile and a half way. The Guardian was among four who jumped in a car, raced across town and sprinted up sedate Pennsylvania Avenue, greeting the Secret Service in a breathless and disheveled state.Perhaps the press were about to witness history. Was Biden set to announce peace in the Middle East or Ukraine? Was this his Bin Laden moment, a military strike that killed a top terrorist leader? Or after a devastating justice department report said his memory is shot due to old age, was he about to do a Lyndon B Johnson and announce he is not seeking re-election?Reporters and TV and radio crews gathered in the Diplomatic Reception Room, the site of Franklin Roosevelt’s radio addresses known as “fireside chats”. Above the fireplace was a portrait of George Washington and thick hardback books bearing the names of recent past presidents. The posh, old-fashioned room comes with panoramic French wallpaper showing vistas of America.After all the hush and hype, Biden emerged at the lectern and did not resign. Far from it; he was in a fighting mood. Biden was responding to the special counsel’s report, welcoming its conclusion that no charges should be brought against him for mishandling classified information. But the president was also combative, emotional and then – not for the first time – took one question too many and paid the price.Special counsel Robert Hur had described the 81-year-old Democrat’s memory as “hazy”, “fuzzy”, “faulty”, “poor” and having “significant limitations”. Biden commented: “There’s even a reference that I don’t remember” – he paused for a moment and swallowed, as if the words are still hard to say – “when my son died”.Beau Biden died of cancer in 2015. With barely concealed anger, the president continued: “How in the hell dare he raise that? Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself, it wasn’t any of their damn business. Some of you have commented. I wear since the day he died every single day, the rosary he got from Our Lady of … ”He reached to show the rosary and appeared to be choking up. “Every Memorial Day we hold a service remembering him, attended by friends and family and the people who loved him. I don’t need anyone, I don’t need anyone to remind me when he passed away.”Tall, blond and loud, Peter Doocy of the conservative Fox News network, which is pushing the geriatric case against Biden hard, noted that the special counsel called Biden a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory”. The president parried: “I’m well-meaning and I’m an elderly man and I know what the hell I’m doing. I’ve been president and I put this country back on its feet.”Doocy pressed: “How bad is your memory and can you continue as president?”Biden: “My memory is so bad I let you speak.”Touché.Another reporter weighed in: “Do you think your memory has gotten worse, Mr President?”Biden answered: “My memory is fine. Take a look at what I’ve done since I’ve become president. None of you thought I could pass any of the things I got passed. How did that happen? I guess I just forgot what was going on.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut soon things started to go off the rails a bit. From a raucous cacophony of reporters’ voices, one emerged to ask: “Mr President, for months when you were asked about your age, you would respond with the words ‘watch me’. Well, many American people have been watching and they have expressed concerns about your age.”Biden looked cross again. “That is your judgment!” he said, his voice rising as he pointed an accusing finger. “That is your judgment. That is not the judgment of the press” – presumably he meant to say public.Biden went on to insist: “I’m the most qualified person in this country to be president of the United States and finish the job I started.”More questions. More frenetic noise. More grumpy expressions and finger pointing from Biden. “I did not share classified information!” he almost shouted. “Let me answer your question!”Still, he rounded off with a flourish: “I did not break the law. Period,” and started making his way to the exit. The Biden comms team must have been breathing a huge sigh of relief. A fiery riposte to the critics! No major gaffes! Then imagine their dismay (“Keep walking, don’t turn around, oh my god, he’s going back”) as Biden halted, turned and returned to the lectern, unable to resist a question about hostage negotiations in Gaza.It was then that, having protested his memory is all good and his age is not an issue, that Biden put his foot in it again, mistakenly referring to Egypt’s leader Abdel Fatah al-Sisi as “the president of Mexico”. This followed his assertions that in recent days he met François Mitterrand of France and Helmut Kohl of Germany when both were already dead.Doocy and Fox News had their story after all. Minutes later, the network was running the chyron: “Biden confuses the presidents of Egypt and Mexico.” It followed up with: “Biden raises even more questions about cognitive health after disastrous press conference.”And it’s still only February. More

    • 200 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Joe Biden criticises special counsel and insists his ‘memory is fine’ in surprise speech – video

      by

      The US president, Joe Biden, defended his memory in a short speech after a report from the justice department questioned his ability to remember key events and facts. The report also exonerated Biden over his handling of classified materials. Biden disputed some press reporting that he had ‘wilfully retained documents’ and said the special counsel report’s descriptions concerning the date of his son’s death were ‘extraneous commentary’ that ‘had no place’ there. Biden’s remarks came after an earlier statement in which the US president welcomed the finding that he should not face criminal charges More

    • 200 Shares139 Views

      in Elections

      Biden defends record as special counsel files no charges in handling of classified material – video

      by

      President Joe Biden welcomed the finding of a special counsel report that he would not face criminal charges in his handling of classified documents. Biden said he was ‘pleased’ the special counsel had ‘reached the conclusion I believed and knew all along they would’. The US Department of Justice special counsel investigating Biden’s handling of classified documents after his vice-presidency released a report concluding that he ‘willfully’ kept and shared classified information including ‘classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan’ and handwritten notes about national security and foreign policy ‘implicating sensitive intelligence sources and methods’. More