Special Counsel Robert Hur’s documents report released Thursday said President Joe Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials” but will not face charges. The report went on to detail the president’s apparent poor memory of the time when he was vice president. Photo by Annabelle Gordon/UPI | License Photo
Special Counsel Robert Hur Thursday declined to prosecute President Joe Biden for his handling of classified documents despite claiming the president’s actions “present serious risks to national security.”
Hur’s report concluded Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified military and national security information, but he will not face charges. Advertisement
“Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen,” the report said, but the evidence “does not establish Mr. Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Biden gave a statement in response to the findings, saying, “I was pleased to see they reached the conclusion I believed all along they would reach.”
“I cooperated completely, threw up no roadblocks, and sought no delays,” the statement read.
Biden also declined to make executive-privilege claims in Hur’s investigation into the classified documents found in his home and office. Advertisement
The report claimed Biden’s memory was “significantly limited” during his 2023 interviews with the special counsel and considered that “Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
Hur continued to detail more instances of the president’s apparently poor memory in the report, saying Biden could not remember when he was vice president or when his son Beau died.
Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president, and Bob Bauer, Biden’s personal counsel, refuted the report’s portrayal of the president’s memory saying it was neither “accurate or appropriate.”
“The report uses highly prejudicial language to describe a commonplace occurrence among witnesses: a lack of recall of years-old events,” they said.
Sauber, however, noted the White House was “pleased” the investigation has ended with no criminal charges.
“We disagree with a number of inaccurate and inappropriate comments in the special counsel’s report,” Sauber said. “Nonetheless, the most important decision the special counsel made — that no charges are warranted — is firmly based on the facts and evidence.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland predicted Wednesday that no charges were likely in the Biden documents incident. Advertisement
In a Thursday letter to congressional lawmakers, Garland said Hur’s report will be submitted to Congress.
Biden sat for voluntary interviews with Hur in October, and the White House said then that the president was cooperating with the investigation.
A few classified documents were discovered by his lawyers clearing a Biden private office at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. The documents originated from Biden’s time as vice president during the Barack Obama administration.
A second batch of documents was found at Biden’s home.
Hur was appointed by Garland to investigate the same month the documents were found. Hur ended his investigation and submitted his report to the Department of Justice on Monday.
Biden voluntarily handed over the documents when they were discovered.
The case comes in the wake of former President Donald Trump being indicted on 40 counts of illegally possessing classified documents.
Hur’s report noted the distinctions between Biden’s classified documents case and that of Trump. The National Archives repeatedly tried and failed to get back the documents from Trump until FBI obtained a warrant to search his Mar-A-Lago home.
That resulted in criminal charges from a grand jury against the former president after Special Council Jack Smith investigated the case. Advertisement
Trump railed against Hur’s decision not to recommend Biden face charges and what he called a “two-tiered system of justice and unconstitutional selective persecution.”
Trump pleaded not guilty to the charges against him and accused Justice Department officials of unfairly targeting Republicans for legal prosecution. He remains the only president in history to face criminal charges.
