Special Counsel Finds Biden ‘Willfully Retained and Disclosed’ Classified Info — but Recommends No Charges

Special counsel Robert Hur announced Thursday he will not recommend President Biden face charges for his mishandling of classified documents after leaving the office of the vice presidency, though he found Biden “willfully retained” such materials.

“We conclude that no criminal charges are warranted in this matter,” Hur’s report reads. “We would conclude the same even if there was no policy against charging a sitting president. Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified information after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.”

“These materials included (1) marked classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, and (2) notebooks containing Mr. Biden’s handwritten entries about issues of national security and foreign policy implicating sensitive intelligence sources and methods. FBI agents recovered these materials from the garage, offices, and basement den in Mr. Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware home,” the report added.

The report says investigators found Biden’s “memory was significantly limited” when they conducted interviews with the president. Even in recordings from 2017 of conversations between Biden and his ghostwriter, Mark Zwontizer, Biden was “often painfully slow, with Mr. Biden struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries.”

In interviews last year, investigators found Biden’s memory to be even worse. He did not remember when his term as vice president ended in one interview or when it began in another interview.

He also could not remember, “even within several years,” when his son Beau died.

Investigators thus found 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.”

“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,” the report said, adding that Biden “is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt.”

Investigators didn’t believe it could prove that Biden “intended to do something the law forbids.”

The White House, for its part, said it is “pleased” the investigation has concluded, but expressed disappointment with “inaccurate and inappropriate comments” made in the report.

Attorney general Merrick Garland appointed Hur to investigate Biden’s handling of classified documents in January 2023 after the president’s attorneys found classified documents reportedly related to his time as a senator and as vice president in his Delaware residences and at the Penn Biden Center, a think tank that served as Biden’s private office from 2017 to 2019 after his time as vice president came to an end.

The documents recovered from Biden’s think tank were discovered in a locked closet by personal attorneys for Biden who were cleaning out the space, the White House said. The lawyers then informed the White House and White House counsel told the National Archives, which referred the matter to the Justice Department.

The FBI later found “some materials and handwritten notes” at the Biden family home in Rehoboth, Del., from Biden’s time as vice president.

According to the report, in addition to materials found in Biden’s Wilmington home, the president also kept “classified notebooks in unsecured and unauthorized spaces at his Virginia and Delaware homes” after leaving the vice presidency.

Hur highlighted the differences between the investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents and the investigation into former president Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents, the latter of which resulted in criminal charges.

“Most notably, after being given multiple chances to return classified documents and avoid prosecution, Mr. Trump allegedly did the opposite.” Hur wrote. “According to the indictment, he not only refused to return the documents for many months, but he also obstructed justice by enlisting others to destroy evidence and then to lie about it.”

“In contrast, Mr. Biden turned in classified documents to the National Archives and the Department of Justice, consented to the search of multiple locations including his homes, sat for a voluntary interview, and in other ways cooperated with the investigation,” the report added.