Biden administration officials did damage control against a special counsel report questioning the president’s memory and handling of classified documents while promising to make changes going forward.

The White House rolled out General Counsel’s Office spokesman Ian Sams for a rare briefing room appearance Friday, during which he said a new “task force” would be created.

“The president is going to appoint a task force to look at how transition teams look at classified materials to ensure there are better processes in place,” Sams said, “They’re going to try to make recommendations so that that can be fixed. And [President Joe Biden] is going to appoint a senior government aid to do that.”

But Sams also vigorously defended Biden’s handling of the documents, saying he cooperated with investigators and never willfully gave classified documents to another person.

Sams frequently referred to the nearly 400-page length of the document, calling the investigation “excessive,” pointing to references on specific page numbers, and doubting aloud whether media members had read it.

For example, he countered the portions about Biden’s slipping memory with assertions from elsewhere in the report saying he gave “clear and forceful” testimony. But Sams also acknowledged that Biden said he “wished he were more engaged” in the process of moving documents after he left the vice presidency in 2017.

Sams pointed to the conclusions of other Democratic officials, including Obama-era Attorney General Eric Holder, who said the report “contains way too many gratuitous remarks and is flatly inconsistent with long-standing Department of Justice traditions.”

Elsewhere, the administration alternated between lauding the investigation’s findings that Biden will not be charged criminally and criticizing the portions that question Biden’s mental acuity.

“Put simply, this case is closed because the facts and the evidence don’t support the theories here,” Sams said during Friday’s press briefing. “The gratuitous comments that respected experts are saying is out of line are inappropriate.”

While the report cleared President Joe Biden of criminal charges, it may have opened larger political headaches in finding that Biden was cleared in part because a jury would perceive him as a “well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.”

Special counsel Robert Hur cast those lapses in a harsh light, writing that Biden struggled to remember what years he entered and left the vice presidency and that he could not remember what year his son died.

Those were among the “gratuitous comments” Sams denounced, even while strongly defending the overall conclusions of the report and emphasizing Biden’s cooperation.

“When the classified documents were found, it was self-reported,” Sams said. “The president directed his team to ensure that any classified documents were returned immediately. Why did he do that? Because the president takes classified information seriously. He always has.”

Biden tried to clear things up with his own Thursday evening press conference but may have complicated the matter when he confused the presidents of Mexico and Egypt.

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White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre also said the report’s questioning of Biden’s memory is not accurate.

“That part of the report, we don’t think lives in reality,” she said. “Comments were made in that report about, obviously, about his memory, we don’t believe live in reality.”