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From the executive summary of the report:
We conclude that no criminal charges are warranted in this matter. We would reach the same conclusion even if Department of Justice policy did not foreclose criminal charges against a sitting president.
Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials 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.
However, for the reasons summarized below, we conclude that the evidence does not establish Mr. Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Prosecution of Mr. Biden is also unwarranted based on our consideration of the aggravating and mitigating factors set forth in the Department of Justice’s Principles of Federal Prosecution. For these reasons, we decline prosecution of Mr. Biden.
Citing Biden’s age and memory, the report states a jury would not find him guilty.
“We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during out interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” the report states. “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.”
“Mr. Biden’s memory was significantly limited, both during his recorded interviews with the ghostwriter in 2017, and in his interview with our office in 2023. And his cooperation with our investigation, including by reporting to the government that the Afghanistan documents were in his Delaware garage, will likely convince some jurors that he made an innocent mistake, rather than acting willfully-that is, with intent to break the law-as the statute requires,” the report states.
The report, which spans hundreds of pages, shows tattered boxes full of documents in Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware garage and in a downtown Washington D.C. office. His son, Hunter Biden, had regular access to the information. The younger Biden does not have a security clearance and has been charged with multiple felonies for tax evasion. The documents include sensitive information about foreign policy and other military operations.
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Bill Melugin @BillMelugin_
BREAKING: These are some photos of the classified docs President Biden stored in the garage in Delaware, according to Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report. Some of these documents included classified information about Afghanistan, the report says. No criminal charges recommended.
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RELATED ARTICLE
Special Counsel: Biden Doesn’t Know When He Was VP or When His Son Died
By Spencer Brown
AP Photo/John Locher
While there’s a lot to unpack in Special Counsel Robert Hur’s 388-page report on President Joe Biden’s mishandling of classified documents, a few passages documenting Biden’s mental state as assessed by investigators is a bombshell set to become a significant new pain point for the White House as it struggles to insist Biden is fit to be president and serve another term.
In the special counsel’s reasoning for why charges wouldn’t be brought against the former president for mishandling classified documents, it turns out they just don’t think a jury could be convinced to convict someone as hapless and elderly as Joe Biden.
“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,” the report states (emphasis added). “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,” the report added.
Ah. So when there are questions about Joe Biden’s demonstrated inability to navigate his way off a stage following remarks, his rampant misstatements about his own life and with whom he’s had conversations, they’re brushed aside as common occurrences that everyone has to deal with. But when there’s a question of criminal culpability for mishandling classified documents after leaving office, Joe Biden is simply too old and gone-in-the-head to be found guilty.
By admitting that it would be a struggle to convince Americans that Biden possesses a “mental state of willfulness,” they’re admitting he’s too far gone to be the President of the United States.
Even worse, the special counsel’s recounting of the interviews with Biden found even more staggering lapses in the president’s memory (emphasis added):
In his interview with our office, Mr. Biden’s memory was worse. 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?”). He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died. And his memory appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him. Among other things, he mistakenly said he “had a real difference” of opinion with General Karl Eikenberry, when, in fact, Eikenberry was an ally whom Mr. Eiden cited approvingly in his Thanksgiving memo to President Obama.
While it remains to be seen the full fallout of the special counsel’s report, it’s safe to assume the 25th Amendment will become a topic of discussion in the coming days, as well as Biden’s future as Democrats’ 2024 nominee.
