Washington, D.C. – A special counsel report released Thursday revealed that President Joe Biden had carelessly kept classified documents and notebooks at his home. The report also stated that the evidence wasn’t strong enough to charge the president with any crimes.
The 345-page report portrays Biden, 81, as someone who haphazardly kept notebooks and documents with classified information at his home, and struggled to recall key dates in his life. This characterization was seized upon by Republicans to attack the Democratic incumbent as unfit for office.
Special counsel Robert K. Hur’s report also mentioned that Biden could not remember the year in which his son Beau died of cancer. This prompted a furious response from the president at a hastily called news conference, where he declared that he never improperly shared classified information with anyone and was fit to be president and run for reelection.
Hur interviewed the president at the White House himself and found evidence that Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials to his ghostwriter after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.” However, the evidence “does not establish Mr. Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.” At the news conference, Biden denied disclosing restricted information, saying he was careful to skip over any sensitive material when sharing his notes.
The report revealed that a jury would find Biden to be a sympathetic figure and “a well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” Prosecutors also suggested that it might not have struck Biden as noteworthy that he was in possession of classified documents so soon after his term as vice president had ended.
A lawyer for Biden on the documents case, Richard Sauber, said he was pleased the investigation had ended without charges, emphasizing that the president “fully cooperated from day one.” However, he also criticized Hur for “a number of inaccurate and inappropriate comments” in the report.
Additional details in the report suggested that Biden’s aides knew his note-taking methods could be a problem and discussed how he should properly store the materials. The special counsel investigation did not determine what Biden’s staffers advised him to do with the materials.
The Justice Department has long had a policy that sitting presidents cannot be accused, charged, or prosecuted for an alleged crime. However, officials said in the report that they would have still decided not to pursue charges even if department policy permitted charging a sitting president.