willfulness

There’s a willfulness to the story that isn’t always easy to overlook, though the fluid staging gives the events a natural flow.

“To date,” Morrell told the council Thursday, “whether by inactivity or willfulness, the mayor has refused to comply with the law.”

“It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him — by then a former president well into his eighties — of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness,” Hur wrote, calling Biden’s memory “hazy,” “fuzzy,” “faulty” and “poor” and claiming that Biden could not recall when his son Beau died or when he served as vice president.

“It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him-by then a former president well into his eighties-of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”

It would be difficult to convince a jury that “a former president well into his 80s” was guilty of a felony that “requires a mental state of willfulness,” Mr. Hur added.