Trump skips joining Biden, others at 9/11 memorial

Washington

President Joe Biden, former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton all attended a somber ceremony on Saturday morning at the National September 11 Memorial in New York City where the World Trade Center towers fell two decades ago.

Biden travelled next to the Flight 93 memorial in Shanksville to attend a wreath-laying ceremony. Earlier, former President George W Bush and Vice President Kamala Harris both spoke at the memorial.

Trump, instead of appearing at the ceremonies, travelled several blocks from his Trump Tower building in Manhattan to the 17th police precinct and the neighbouring fire station in New York City. During an unannounced stop at a Shanksville fire department, Biden praised Bush for encouraging American unity in his speech. He also defended his administration’s handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan in brief remarks to the press pool.

FBI memo hints at Saudi involvement

The Biden administration declassified an FBI memo on Saturday that fortified suspicions of official Saudi involvement with the hijackers in the September 11, 2001 attacks, but it fell well short of proof that victims’ families suing Saudi Arabia had hoped for.

The memo from April 4, 2016, which had been classified until now, showed links between Omar Bayoumi, at the time a student but suspected to have been a Saudi intelligence operative, and two of the Al-Qaeda operatives who took part in the plot to hijack and crash four airliners into targets in NY and Washington.