After an extensive investigation into President Joe Biden’s purported mishandling of classified records, Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report concludes that no criminal charges will be recommended against the president for improper retention of classified documents.
Since last year, Special Counsel Robert Hur has been investigating Biden’s improper retention of classified records. He revealed on Thursday that among the documents related to foreign policy and national security were classified materials concerning military and foreign policy matters in Afghanistan, which included “sensitive intelligence sources and methods.”
“We conclude that no criminal charges are warranted in this matter,” his report states. “We would reach the same conclusion even if the Department of Justice policy did not foreclose criminal charges against a sitting president.”
The special counsel also described Biden as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” as Fox News noted.
“We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. 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 wrote in the report. “Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone from whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. 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.”
However, Hur said his investigation “uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.”
The materials included “marked classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, and notebooks containing Mr. Biden’s handwritten entries about issues of national security and foreign policy implicating sensitive intelligence sources and methods.”
🚨 BREAKING: Photos reveal boxes of classified documents Joe Biden stored in his Garage pic.twitter.com/XYp006dI1Y
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) February 8, 2024
Hur said FBI agents recovered the materials from “the garages, offices, and basement den in Mr. Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home.”
But remarkably, despite finding the documents in Biden’s possession, Hur said that the evidence “does not establish Mr. Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.”
