Election 2024‘My Memory Is Fine,’ a Defiant Biden Declares After Special Counsel Report

Even in a campaign in which Mr. Trump’s dominance has sapped the race of much of its drama, his win in Nevada felt particularly preordained. His last significant G.O.P. rival, Nikki Haley, opted months ago to skip the caucuses, which were run by the Nevada Republican Party, and participated instead in a primary election on Tuesday required by state law.

Embarrassingly for Ms. Haley, she was heavily outvoted in that election by a “None of These Candidates” option on the ballot. She was essentially unopposed, but even without Mr. Trump on the ballot, Republican voters rejected her.

Ms. Haley still won the contest, but its results were effectively immaterial. The state’s Republican Party, which is led by a close Trump ally, decided that it would allocate its presidential delegates based only on the caucuses, and it forced candidates to choose to participate in one contest or the other.

The symbolic success by Mr. Trump on Tuesday was part of a strategy pushed by his supporters in Nevada, including its Republican governor, and offered further indication of the former president’s hold among Republicans in the state.

Competitive or not, Mr. Trump’s victory in the caucuses on Thursday remains a crucial prize that allows him to rack up delegates and claim additional momentum as attention shifts to South Carolina’s primary, his next battle with Ms. Haley, on Feb. 24.

It also capped off a remarkable day on the trail that began with the Supreme Court signaling it would most likely rule in Mr. Trump’s favor regarding a challenge to keep him off the ballot in Colorado.

Later, his campaign seized on a special counsel’s report that raised pointed questions about President Biden’s mental acuity, something Mr. Trump and his advisers have been doing for months. And the former president also won the U.S. Virgin Islands caucuses on Thursday, trouncing Ms. Haley and capturing 73 percent of the vote.

Mr. Trump and his allies have repeatedly urged Ms. Haley to drop out of the race, citing his rising delegate tally and his runaway lead in the polls as evidence that she has no mathematical path to the nomination.

The Trump campaign has argued that Ms. Haley’s insistence on continuing her campaign is draining time and resources that Republicans could better deploy against President Biden, who faces only nominal opposition in the Democratic primary.

On Thursday afternoon, Mr. Trump said at a news conference at Mar-a-Lago, his residence in Florida, that he did not understand why Ms. Haley was still in the race, adding that he believed her candidacy “hurts the party and, in a way, hurts the country.”

Mr. Trump’s campaign events in Nevada, while few, made clear that his focus was largely on November, when the state is expected to be a competitive battleground.

He used his speeches to try to drum up grass-roots support and test his messaging, particularly as he tries to chip away at Democrats’ traditional base in the state, particularly its union work force and large share of Hispanic voters.

In January, he railed against Mr. Biden’s handling of the influx of migrants at the border, arguing without providing specifics that the issue had disproportionately hurt Hispanic Americans. And he repeatedly insisted that Black and Hispanic Americans had fared better economically under his administration.

Mr. Trump will most likely need to make gains among those groups, or at least dissuade them from backing Democrats, if he hopes to reverse his losses in the state in 2016 and 2020.

Still, he enjoys broad support among Nevada Republicans, handily winning the state’s caucuses in 2016 and consolidating his strength there since then.

Voters at William E. Orr Middle School in southeast Las Vegas said they were eager to usher Mr. Trump back into the White House and turn the page on Mr. Biden, especially after the special counsel’s report.

“I feel bad for Biden,” said Susan Sevilleja, 53. “I just really don’t think he knows what’s going on.”

The chairman of Nevada’s Republican Party, Michael J. McDonald, is an ardent ally who was one of six state Republicans indicted in the fake elector scheme meant to overturn Mr. Biden’s 2020 election victory.

Mr. McDonald also repeatedly pushed false claims of voter fraud that remain at the heart of Mr. Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

Mr. McDonald’s close ties to Mr. Trump and his stewardship of the party’s caucuses contributed in part to accusations by Ms. Haley’s campaign and others that the contest was set up in favor of Mr. Trump.

Last year, the party agreed on new rules for its caucuses that disadvantaged another Trump rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, by effectively preventing the super PAC that backed him from participating directly on Caucus Day.

The change came months after Mr. McDonald and a group of state party officials were invited to Mar-a-Lago, where they were treated to an hourslong meal that concluded with ice cream sundaes.

Kellen Browning contributed reporting.

“I know there’s some attention paid to some language in the report about my recollection of events,” Mr. Biden said, his chin quivering either from anger or sadness. “There’s even a reference that I don’t remember when my son died. How in the hell dare he raise that?”

He said he had worn his son’s rosary “since the day he died.”

Beau Biden, who died of brain cancer in 2015, appears 16 times in the pages of the report prepared by Robert K. Hur, the special counsel appointed to investigate Mr. Biden’s handling of classified documents.

Investigators describe combing through boxes filled with mementos sent to the Bidens after Beau’s death. Mr. Biden had kept photos of his son on the campaign trail in a folder marked “Beau Iowa,” and had kept 28 boxes that “contained letters expressing condolences related to the death of Beau Biden,” according to the report.

Mr. Biden had also kept a folder with clippings labeled “Notable Stories on the Life of Beau Biden,” and an envelope labeled “Layout of Beau’s House,” which was described by an assistant to Mr. Biden as particularly important to him.

Investigators also focused on the notebooks Mr. Biden kept as vice president and found that some contained diarylike entries on “purely personal subjects, such as the illness and death of his son.”

In one case, Mr. Biden’s ruminations were just one page away from notes he took during a sensitive meeting held in the White House Situation Room in 2015. Investigators described Mr. Biden as toggling back and forth between emotional and professional topics in conversations with a ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer, as he worked on a memoir.

Mr. Biden has blended that gutting personal loss with his political career ever since.

He still sometimes mentions his son in the present tense in private discussions, according to people who have spoken with him. Last weekend, Mr. Biden and Jill Biden, the first lady, visited Beau’s grave in Delaware before the president visited the Biden campaign headquarters.

On Thursday, Mr. Biden sparred with reporters who questioned his memory, even as he made the sort of mistakes in recollection that he and his advisers were hoping to avoid.

Still, a president who has infused his son’s memory into his presidency wanted to make one thing clear, to both the special counsel’s office and to his critics.

“I don’t need anyone to remind me when he passed away,” Mr. Biden said.

More than 74,000 ballots have been counted so far in Nevada’s Republican presidential primary, even though no delegates were at stake. That’s low by many measures — just 13 percent of registered Republicans in the state. But, with some mail ballots still to be counted, it is likely to surpass the number of voters in the state’s highest-turnout G.O.P. caucus — 75,000 votes in 2016.

Direct comparisons between caucuses and primaries are not apples-to-apples. In-person caucuses, like those being held tonight, often draw fewer voters than primaries because they take longer and require voters to be present at a specific time. Before legislators voted in 2021 to require primaries, both parties held presidential caucuses in Nevada.

Turnout in Nevada’s 2022 midterm primaries might be a better gauge of just how low primary turnout was on Tuesday. More than 228,000 Republicans turned out to vote in the G.O.P. Senate primary that year, more than double the number who voted in the presidential primary.

On the Democratic side, at about 125,000 ballots counted so far, the Democratic presidential primary turnout has already surpassed the party’s caucus turnout record from 2008 (about 118,000). A relatively uncompetitive primary featuring incumbents for statewide offices still drew more than 175,000 voters in 2022.

Another factor in the participation levels for Tuesday’s primary: Nevada moved to an automatic mail ballot system in 2022. The state sent mail ballots to all registered voters, making it easier for Democrats to cast their vote for President Biden, Republicans to cast their ballot for Nikki Haley or people of both parties to register their protest with a vote for “None of These Candidates.” Mail votes have accounted for more than three-quarters of total turnout so far.

Former President Donald J. Trump, the front-runner for the Republican nomination who faces charges in a separate case involving the mishandling of classified documents, said the decision represented “a two-tiered system of justice and unconstitutional selective prosecution.”

And Nikki Haley, Mr. Trump’s remaining Republican primary challenger, said on social media that the findings represented a “double standard” — and used the report to attack both her primary opponent and Mr. Biden.

“If Biden’s defense is old age and forgetfulness, Trump can easily make the same claim,” she wrote. “Trump should quickly hire Biden’s lawyers.”

Later, she renewed her call for Mr. Biden to take a mental competency test, something she supports for all politicians over the age of 75 — her primary rival, Mr. Trump, is 77.

Most Democrats have been notably silent about the report, choosing not to weigh in as their Republican counterparts piled on.

Representative Dan Goldman of New York, a Democrat, dismissed the idea that charges against Mr. Biden were not pursued because of his age. He told CNN that the special counsel’s description of Mr. Biden having a “poor memory” was “delivered by a Republican trying to make a political statement.”

Mr. Goldman said that when he spoke with Mr. Biden on Oct. 7, after Hamas attacked Israel, the president “was sharper than anyone I’ve spoken to about a very complex geopolitical, urgent issue.” A former prosecutor, Mr. Goldman added that the comments were “completely extraneous to the report.”

Richard Sauber, a lawyer for President Biden, said in a statement that the president’s team disagreed with “a number of inaccurate and inappropriate comments in the special counsel’s report.” But, he added, “the most important decision the special counsel made — that no charges are warranted — is firmly based on the facts and evidence.”

Republicans in the halls of Congress also used the report to question Mr. Biden’s mental capacity to serve as president. The top four House Republicans, led by Speaker Mike Johnson, said in a statement: “A man too incapable of being held accountable for mishandling classified information is certainly unfit for the Oval Office.”

Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, wrote on X that the special counsel had “decided not to bring charges against Biden because they believe he has age related dementia.”

Another prominent Republican Senator, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, said that while he considered Mr. Biden “a friend,” the assessment of his condition “is something the American people will have to consider this fall.”

The “description offered by Special Counsel Hur regarding President Biden’s condition will be seen, around the world, as unnerving,” Mr. Graham wrote on X.

The super PAC supporting Mr. Trump, MAGA Inc., quoted excerpts directly from the special counsel’s report in an email blast, saying that it “makes it clear that Joe Biden is not well.”

Other Republicans followed the group’s example, pouncing on a document widely seen as a gift to the Trump campaign. The Republican National Committee shared an image on X of a mock Biden campaign sign that included the special counsel’s description of him.

Kari Lake, a Trump ally running for the U.S. Senate in Arizona, joined the barrage of criticism. “Are we supposed to be sympathetic to the fact the man who possesses the nuclear codes is too old to know right from wrong?” she asked in a social media post.

In the classified documents case Mr. Trump is embroiled in, investigators found that he obstructed attempts from the government to recover those documents. Mr. Hur cited Mr. Biden’s cooperation with investigators as one of the factors in his decision not to bring charges.

Nonetheless, Mr. Trump insisted that “the Biden documents case is 100 times different and more severe than mine.”

“I did nothing wrong,” he said. Later on Thursday afternoon, Mr. Trump told Fox News that Mr. Biden “had to have a poor memory in order to get out of this mess.”

Former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina has campaigned virtually in the territory, meeting with Republicans in a video call shortly after her loss in the New Hampshire primary, and campaign ads supporting Ms. Haley have appeared in local media. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida also made virtual appearances for the U.S. territory before he dropped out of the race.

Voters in the Virgin Islands overwhelmingly rejected Mr. Trump, as well as his rivals, in the 2016 caucuses when the hundreds of Republicans who voted elected to leave their six delegates uncommitted heading into the convention — essentially choosing “none of these candidates” in much the same way Nevada Republicans did on Tuesday in their primary.

But local infighting and tensions with the national party set off a struggle over the outcome, and the result was disputed for months. The territory’s Republican Party chairman disqualified the six delegates chosen by voters, but the Republican National Committee later overturned that decision. Doyle Webb, the R.N.C. chairman at the time, said top local party officials had engaged in “unprofessional infighting.”

The unbound Republican delegates for the Virgin Islands were courted by rival campaigns, but ultimately backed Mr. Trump at the convention.

But there is potential for similar disputes in this year’s caucuses. The national party punished Virgin Island Republicans because they adopted a ranked-choice voting system in violation of party rules, cutting the territory’s delegate count to four from nine. The local party appears to be ignoring that decision, insisting they will award nine delegates. Six candidates are on the ballot, but Ms. Haley and Mr. Trump are the only ones still in the race.

Local party officials had tried to oust their leadership over the rules violations, but the national party overruled that action, saying that the effort to remove the party chairman had also violated party rules.

Caucus sites will close by 5 p.m. Eastern time.

“It seems like something from the far-off future, but it is already here,” the F.C.C. chairwoman, Jessica Rosenworcel, said in a statement. “Bad actors are using A.I.-generated voices in unsolicited robocalls to extort vulnerable family members, imitate celebrities and misinform voters.”

Concerns about the use of A.I. to replicate the voices of and images of politicians and celebrities has grown in recent months as the technology to recreate personas has taken off — particularly ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November.

Those concerns came to a head late last month, when thousands of voters received an unsolicited robocall from a faked voice of President Biden, instructing voters to abstain from voting in the first primary of the election season. The state attorney general office announced this week that it had opened a criminal investigation into a Texas-based company it believes is behind the robocall. The caller ID was falsified to make it seem as if the calls were coming from the former New Hampshire chairwoman of the Democratic Party.

A.I. has also been used to create deep-fake videos and ads mimicking the voices and images of celebrities and politicians. That includes fake and unapproved videos of the actor Tom Hanks promoting dental plans and one with sexually explicit content of the singer Taylor Swift.

Lawmakers have called for legislation to ban A.I. deep fakes in political ads but no bills have gained traction in Congress. In the vacuum of federal legislation, more than a dozen states have passed laws curbing A.I. use in political ads.