Former United States President Joe Biden took the stage at the National Bar Association’s 100th Annual Awards Gala in Chicago to deliver remarks honoring the United States civil rights legacy, and the state of the country.
Speaking amid continual scrutiny around his physical and mental health, Biden played up the importance of a strong judicial branch, and characterized the US as at a moment in time that “makes us confront hard truths.”
“So many of you have fought to make this country live up to its highest ideals,” Biden said. “Not since the tumultuous days of the 1960s has this fight been so existential to who we are as a nation, with marginalized groups so dramatically under attack.”
Founded in 1925, the National Bar Association is the largest and oldest network of Black law professors, judges, and lawyers in the US. Biden’s speech focused heavily on the contributions of Black lawyers to America’s civil rights history, and the need to continue that legacy, in light of an administration that he said “seeks to erase history, erase quality, erase justice itself.
“We see the apparent glee of some of our politicians while watching immigrants who are in this country legally torn from the arms of their family, dragged away in handcuffs from the only home they’ve ever known,” Biden said. “My friends, we need to face the hard truths of this administration.”
Law firms representing those opposing the Trump administration’s agenda have been targeted with executive orders by the administration. Some have capitulated to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. Federal judges, increasingly on the receiving end of harsh rhetoric and threats to their safety, have weighed creating their own security forces.
“We see the law firms, bowing to pressure, bending to bullies, instead of staying rooted in justice of the law,” Biden said.
The gala is not the first speaking engagement of the summer that Biden has used to take aim at current US President Donald Trump. In June, he offered oblique criticism of the Trump administration during a Juneteenth celebration service at the Reedy Chapel AME Church, one of the places in Texas where an order proclaiming the end of slavery was read on 19 June 1865.
Earlier this month, Biden delivered a keynote address at the Society for Human Resource Management conference in San Diego. During a question and answer session, Biden said he was “working like hell” to finish a memoir of his presidency as he contends with his prostate cancer diagnosis.
In his book, a reflection of the 46th president’s four years in office, Biden will probably attempt to shape his legacy – and to confront questions about his mental health and physical fitness that clouded his final years in office and ultimately forced to end his bid for re-election.
While Biden heaped praise on former vice-president Kamala Harris during his speech, he did not reference his decision to step down mid-election.
In sporadic public appearances since leaving the White House, Biden has hit back against new reporting that alleges a “cover up” by the then-president’s closest aides to hide his frailty and decline from an American public who polls showed believed he was too old to serve another four years.
Biden’s speech did not directly address these allegations, although he did note his two of his claims to fame in US politics – being the youngest person ever elected to the US Senate, and the oldest person elected to the presidency.
The White House and congressional Republicans have amplified the claims, opening investigations into whether Biden was in control when he made a series of notable clemency decisions at the end of his presidency. In an interview with the New York Times this month, Biden said he orally authorized every pardon and commutation issued during his term and called Republicans who said his staff abused the presidential autopen “liars”.
Hours before Biden spoke, Mike Donilon, one of the former president’s top advisers and longest-serving aides, gave a closed-door interview to the House Oversight Committee as part of the Republican-led panel’s investigation into Biden’s cognitive decline. On Wednesday, Steve Ricchetti, another top adviser to the former president, also appeared before the committee.
