Special counsel says there is evidence Biden 'willfully retained and disclosed classified materials' but will not be charged
WASHINGTON — Special counsel Robert Hur has declined to prosecute President Joe Biden for his handling of classified documents, but said Biden's practices "present serious risks to national security," and added that Biden portrayed himself as an "elderly man with a poor memory" who would be sympathetic to a jury.....Hur's report included several shocking lines about Bidens’ memory, which the report said “was significantly limited” during his 2023 interviews with the special counsel. Biden's age and presentation would make it more difficult to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that the now 81-year-old was guilty of willfully committing a crime....."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," it said. "Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for 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."
Later in the report, the special counsel said that the president's memory was "worse" during their interview with him, compared to his memory in recorded conversations from 2017.
"He did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended ('if it was 2013 — when did I stop being Vice President?'), and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began ('in 2009, am I still Vice President?')," the report said.
Biden also had difficulty remembering the timing of his son Beau's death, as well as a debate about Afghanistan.
"He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died," the report said.....
"For all of the classified materials recovered during this investigation, after the vice presidency, Mr. Biden did not receive a written waiver of the need-to-know requirement, and no agency official made the findings required by the executive order," the report states.
Some of the report focuses on documents about Afghanistan, from early in former President Barack Obama's presidency. About a month after he left office as vice president, in a recorded conversation with his ghostwriter in February 2017, Biden remarked that he “just found all this classified stuff downstairs,” the report said. Biden was believed to have been referencing classified documents about the Afghanistan troop surge in 2009, which Biden opposed.
