Navy veteran congressman slams Cabinet members for not invoking 25th Amendment: ‘Nuclear codes’

HARRISBURG, Pa. — Guy Reschenthaler, a Republican Pennsylvania congressman and Navy veteran, is calling on President Biden to step down "immediately" following Special Counsel Robert Hur’s months-long report on the handling of classified documents that characterized Biden as an "elderly man with a poor memory."

"Biden should step down immediately. The fact that you have a special counsel report that came out that said that he's not mentally fit to handle classified documents. This is the guy that has the nuclear codes," Reschenthaler told Fox News Digital last week in an interview in Harrisburg.

Reschenthaler spoke to Fox Digital while attending the NRA’s Great American Outdoor Show on Friday evening, when former President Trump delivered the keynote speech for the event’s Presidential Forum and gave the Republican congressman a shout-out for doing a "fantastic job" in the Keystone State.

Reschenthaler came out swinging on Thursday after the release of the Hur report, demanding that Biden step down while pointing to portions of the report that described Biden as not being aware of when he was vice president or when his son, Beau Biden, died.

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"Joe Biden lacks the mental fitness to be President of the United States," Reschenthaler tweeted on Thursday. "He doesn’t know when he was Vice President. He has no idea about key events in his personal life. And he has access to our nuclear codes?"

"Biden must resign."

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Reschenthaler told Fox News Digital point-blank that Cabinet members of the Biden administration should "be ashamed of themselves" for not invoking the 25th Amendment in the wake of the report. The 25th Amendment stipulates the presidential order of succession if a commander in chief is unable to fulfill their duties, dies, resigns or becomes incapacitated.

"This is the guy that is supposed to address all these issues on the international stage, whether it's the war in Gaza, Houthi rebels firing rockets [at] ships in the Red Sea, an aggressive China, an aggressive Russia, you name it. And we're supposed to have this guy … that can't be prosecuted for mishandling classified documents because he's not mentally fit. I'm sorry, it's time for him to step down. And the members of the Cabinet should be ashamed of themselves for not bringing forward the 25th Amendment and having the Cabinet remove him from office," he said.

Hur carried out a 15-month investigation into Biden's possession of classified documents, ultimately deciding against criminally charging the president.

"We conclude that no criminal charges are warranted in this matter," reads the report, released Thursday. "We would reach the same conclusion even if the Department of Justice policy did not foreclose criminal charges against a sitting president."

The report described the president’s memory as "hazy," "fuzzy," "faulty," "poor" and added that he’s "a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory." Following the report’s public release, the White House counsel's office requested that Hur revise some of the language in the report.

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On Sunday, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said he and other Cabinet members have "not at all" considered invoking the 25th Amendment to remove and replace the president, defending Biden as "sharp."

Reschenthaler joined the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General Corps and served in Iraq. He represents Pennsylvania’s 14th Congressional District, which is in the southwestern part of the state and encompasses areas such as Fayette County, Greene County and Washington County.

When asked about Biden’s competency in relation to holding nuclear codes, considering Reschenthaler's military background, the Pennsylvania congressman said the president should "absolutely not" be armed with "The Gold Codes."

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"President Biden has been a disaster as a commander in chief," he told Fox Digital. "One of the first things he did was abandon and surrender Afghanistan to the Taliban after 20 years of us being there. And the way he did it was was so naive and so foolish: giving up the Bagram Airbase, giving up air superiority, giving up our ability to have intel. He's been a disaster."

The Taliban regained control of Afghanistan in 2021 after Biden pulled U.S. service members from the country, leading to the deaths of 13 U.S. troops killed in a suicide bombing. Amid the U.S. pulling troops from the country, the Taliban seized a "fair amount" of American weaponry, the Biden administration said at the time. The U.S. has spent about $83 billion since 2001 on training and equipment for Afghan forces, including $147 million on Black Hawk helicopters and $2 billion on Humvees.

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Experts have previously said the botched withdrawal signaled to U.S. adversaries that America would not stand by its allies and emboldened nations such as Russia. Reschenthaler told Fox Digital it was "not a coincidence" that Russia invaded Ukraine under the Biden administration – a conflict that continues nearly two years later.

"Then you look at what happened in Ukraine. It's not a coincidence that Russia moved into Ukraine originally under the Obama administration, waited four years, and then had Biden come in and then moved in to take more of Ukraine. It's because they sense weakness with Joe Biden. Then you have the Iranians sowing discord all over the Middle East … backing Houthi rebels to threaten shipping lanes with the Red Sea. And let's not forget about China, our No. 1 adversary. Biden is way too friendly toward China. I mean, his son has a $1 billion hedge fund that he got when he came back from China," Reschenthaler said.

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"This is not the man you want in the Oval Office when you're dealing with all these adversaries."

Biden held a press conference Thursday evening, fielding questions from the media about his mental clarity, memory and age following Hur's report. Amid Biden defending his mental state, he confused Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi as the "president of Mexico," sparking concern stateside as well as abroad. Critics lampooned the president for the gaffe, and some called for the invocation of the 25th Amendment.

The White House released a memo Saturday titled "We don’t blame Republican officials for their desperation to forget the Biden presidency," which detailed Biden’s successes as president, including helping "secure the release of over 100 of the hostages taken by Hamas" and how Republicans and Democrats have previously lauded Biden for his mental acuity.

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"President Biden’s experience, character, and drive have made him the most successful president in modern history, getting the country back on its feet after inheriting a nation in crisis and going on to achieve goals that eluded his predecessors for decades," the memo reads.

Allies of the president joined Sunday morning news shows this past weekend to defend the president, including Biden campaign co-chair Mitch Landrieu calling Hur’s characterizations of the president as a "bucket of BS."

"He's smart. He's on his game," Landrieu told NBC’s "Meet the Press" on Sunday. "And as Secretary Mayorkas said a minute ago, when you go in to brief the president, you better have your big-boy pants on. And this kind of sense that he's not ready for this job, it's just a bucket of BS that's so deep your boots will get stuck."

Robert Bauer, Biden’s personal attorney, appeared on CBS’s "Face the Nation" and described Hur’s report as "shoddy" and riddled with "factual misstatements."

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"The investigation could have been concluded in two or three months. It went on for over 15 months. And so, along with the legal conclusion comes this flood of characterizations, factual misstatements, pejorative comments about the president that are inconsistent with DOJ policy and norms. And that, as you see over the last 48 hours, have been widely criticized by legal experts. This is not what prosecutors do. It is shoddy work product," Bauer said Sunday.