Special counsel Robert Hur on Thursday said no criminal charges are warranted against President Biden for mishandling classified documents even though he “willfully” retained and disclosed secret materials.
The independent prosecutor closed his investigation with a report that harshly criticized Biden’s handling of highly classified documents but said Biden could not have been found guilty of any crime.
“We conclude that no criminal charges are warranted in this matter,” the report states. “We would reach the same conclusion even if the Department of Justice policy did not foreclose criminal charges against a sitting president.”
Hur, a former Republican federal prosecutor, said a jury would likely have found significant reasonable doubt about whether Biden intended to do anything wrong.
In a controversial passage, Hur described Biden as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” Biden’s lawyers called that pot shot “inappropriate.”
“I’m well meaning, and I’m an elderly man, and I know what the hell I’m doing,” Biden told reporters in a feisty news conference at the White House on Thursday evening. “My memory is fine.”
Biden said he was glad the matter was closed.
The Hur report underlines the stark contrasts between the Biden case, in which he cooperated fully and said he never intentionally retained any secret documents, and the criminal case against former President Trump.
Trump is accused of intentionally taking hundreds of classified documents to his Mar-a-Lago estate and resisted government efforts to get them back.
He is charged with mishandling documents and obstructing justice for trying to thwart the investigation. A trial is scheduled to start in May although it is likely to be pushed back.
The Biden report came after a yearlong investigation into the improper retention of classified documents by Biden, from his time as a senator and as vice president, that were found at his Delaware home, as well as at a Philadelphia office.
After Biden’s lawyers uncovered classified documents at his former office, Biden’s representatives promptly contacted the National Archives to arrange their return to the government. The National Archives notified the FBI, which opened an investigation.
Unlike Trump, Biden voluntarily made his homes available to agents to conduct thorough searches, and that is how the most sensitive documents came to the attention of the Justice Department.
Part of the report centers on Biden’s handling of classified documents about Afghanistan that he retained after he left office as vice president in his Delaware home.
Biden preserved materials documenting his opposition to a troop surge, including a 2009 classified handwritten memo to then-President Obama.
“These materials were proof of the stand Mr. Biden took in what he regarded as among the most important decisions of his vice presidency,” the report said.
The documents have classification markings up to the Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information Level and were found in a box in Biden’s Delaware garage “that contained other materials of great significance to him and that he appears to have personally used and accessed.”
Photographs included in the report showed some of the classified Afghanistan documents stored in a worn cardboard box stored in Biden’s garage, apparently in a loose collection with other household items, including a ladder and a wicker basket, the report said.
