Heilemann: Special Counsel Could Have Written His Report Without Saying Biden Is ‘Elderly Man with Poor Memory’

Heilemann: “Well, first, Joe, I’ll say that, literally, before we started the program, I was saying to Chuck Rosenberg sitting here, can you explain to me how this is different from what Jim Comey did in — what we think of 2016 as Comey I, his first intercession in the election, in the case you’re referring to in July, I think, of 2016, when he did what you just said. I, like you, am old enough to remember when prosecutors either charged someone and issued a charging document, or they issued a declension. And declension was one sentence, which is, ‘We decline to prosecute.’ Chuck will talk about something I don’t know much about, and the difference between back in those days when we had the independent counsel statute and what we have now, when we have the special counsels and what the regulations are and what they have to do. I will say that without — there’s no doubt in my mind that this special prosecutor could have written the same report without using these words: ‘Elderly man with a poor memory.’ Like you, I’m a simple country journalist. I can find a lot of different ways to say this without saying something like that.”
SCARBOROUGH: “I’m a simple country lawyer and I know, what’s a headline? What should the headline from this report be? ‘Not indicted.’”
Heilemann: “‘Not guilty.’ Right.”
SCARBOROUGH: “Not the evidence to indict him. It’s not there. And the clear difference is, as he wrote, between Trump and Biden. That should be — “
Heilemann: “And I would have thought, Joe — “
SCARBOROUGH: “Wait, hold on, John. Hold on, John. Do you think that this guy is so naive? Do you think this guy is so stupid? Do you think this guy is so clueless that he didn’t know, by putting words in that Donald Trump would love for him to put in there, that that wasn’t going to be the headline, that he didn’t know? He’s a Trumper who knew.”
Heilemann: “Right.”
SCARBOROUGH: “So why in the world would the Justice Department allow the dicta to be in there? It’s gratuitous. And he knows it was gratuitous. It was bad faith. It was bad faith that he did it.”