The special prosecutor investigating President Biden said in a report released Thursday that Mr. Biden «voluntarily» retained and disclosed classified documents after leaving the vice presidency in 2017, but concluded that «no criminal charge is not justified.”
Robert K. Hur, the special adviser, said in an unflattering report of more than 300 pages that Mr. Biden left the White House after his vice presidency with classified documents on Afghanistan and notebooks with handwritten entries “involving sensitive intelligence sources and methods.” from White House briefings.
Mr. Hur criticized Mr. Biden for sharing the contents of the notebooks with a ghostwriter who helped him with his 2017 memoir, “Promise Me, Dad,» even though he knew part of it was classified.
But the evidence “does not establish Mr. Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt,” said Mr. Hur, a former Trump Justice Department official appointed by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland in January 2023 to lead the investigation after classified files were discovered in the garage and living spaces of Mr. Biden’s home in Delaware and his former office in Washington.
While Mr. Hur decided not to pursue Mr. Biden, 81, some of the reasoning he cited for his decision immediately created a new political crisis for the White House. In recounting his interviews with the president, Mr. Hur described him as being unable to remember key dates from his time in the Obama White House — or even the specific death of his son Beau.
“Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview with him, as an elderly, friendly, well-meaning man with a poor memory,” Mr. Hur wrote.
He cited Mr. Biden’s age when he leaves office — either in 2025 or 2029 — as an additional factor. It would be difficult to convince a jury that “an octogenarian former president” was guilty of a crime that “requires a mental state of will,” Mr. Hur added.
In a statement after the report’s release, Mr. Biden said he took national security seriously, «cooperated fully, stood no stone unturned, and sought no delay» in responding to requests for information. by Mr. Hur.
In fiery remarks later from the White House, Mr. Biden attacked the report, saying his memory was good and that he had not intentionally kept classified documents. He also said he was outraged that Mr Hur had suggested he did not remember the date of his son’s death.
“How the hell dare he bring that up?” » Mr. Biden said.
Earlier, Mr. Biden’s White House counsel and private lawyers criticized Mr. Hur for suggesting that the president had flouted the law, even though he concluded that prosecutors did not have the evidence to prove it in court. And they criticized Mr. Hur’s characterization of Mr. Biden as suffering from memory problems, saying it was not unusual to have trouble remembering dates and details of past events ago a long time.
Bob Bauer, Mr. Biden’s personal lawyer, accused Mr. Hur of disregarding Justice Department «regulations and standards» and compared the special counsel’s conduct to that of James B. Comey, the director of the FBI who, during the 2016 presidential campaign, criticized Hillary Clinton’s handling of the case. sensitive information even though he declined to recommend criminal charges.
In a letter included as an appendix to the report, Mr. Biden’s lawyers called the inclusion of a discussion of Mr. Biden’s memory «derogatory» and noted that the five-hour interview with the president had took place shortly after the terrorist attacks of October 7. on Israel, after Mr. Biden spent hours on the phone with foreign leaders.
“The report uses highly prejudicial language to describe a common phenomenon among witnesses: a lack of recollection of years-old events,” they wrote, adding: “This language is not supported by the facts, and nor is it used appropriately by a federal prosecutor. in this context.»
Still, Mr. Hur’s assessment will certainly provide powerful new lines of attack for former President Donald J. Trump. Mr. Trump has long sought to sow doubt about Mr. Biden’s fitness for office, and he has sought to discredit the Justice Department over its much more serious investigation into Mr. Trump’s retention of documents classified after leaving office and his alleged obstruction of the process. government efforts to recover them.
Mr. Hur’s report includes a photograph of the open box in which the FBI found classified documents on Afghanistan in Mr. Biden’s cluttered garage, next to a ladder and old exercise equipment , and another image of sensitive documents stored in a cardboard banker’s box.
Similar photos taken during the 2022 search of Mr. Trump’s Florida resort at Mar-a-Lago showed him storing boxes in a bathroom accessible to visitors. After Mr. Hur’s report was made public, Mr. Trump sent the image of the Biden garage through his campaign’s email account, along with the claim, unsupported by any evidence, that he had » cooperated much more” than Mr. Biden.
In fact, Mr. Hur emphasized that Mr. Biden cooperated fully with the investigation, allowing investigators unhindered access to his properties. Mr. Trump is accused of misleading the government for months about the hundreds of highly classified documents in his possession and of having his staff move boxes as officials sought to recover them.
In the report’s introduction, Mr. Hur suggested that Mr. Biden’s cooperation with investigators was a factor in his decision not to bring charges.
Unlike Mr. Biden, Mr. Trump refused to return the documents he kept “after being given several chances to return the documents and avoid prosecution,” he wrote.
Mr. Hur was bound by a Justice Department legal policy that immunizes sitting presidents from charges of crimes while in office. But he said his decision not to pursue criminal charges would have been the same even if regulations had allowed him to charge Mr. Biden.
The special prosecutor conducted 173 interviews, including with Mr. Biden and his top advisers, and reviewed hundreds of thousands of documents. Some of the documents were collected before Mr. Hur took over the investigation, when Mr. Garland assigned John R. Lausch Jr., then the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in Chicago, to conduct preliminary investigations.
It was Mr. Lausch who recommended the appointment of a special counsel, department officials said.
Some classified documents related to Mr. Biden’s 2009 opposition to a temporary troop surge in Afghanistan supported by President Barack Obama’s team, which he considered «a Vietnam-like mistake,» wrote Mr. Hur.
Other documents concerned Mr. Biden’s attempt more broadly to «document his legacy and cite evidence that he was a presidential woodworker,» the report noted.
In a recorded conversation at a rented property in Virginia in February 2017 — a month after leaving office — Mr. Biden told his ghostwriter that he “just found all the classified stuff down there.”
Mr. Hur said that exchange provided the strongest basis for a lawsuit that he had found. But he concluded that a jury was unlikely to convict Mr. Biden, given that he had become accustomed to legally retaining documents as vice president, which he may not have not completely adapted to the new restrictions and that he thought he had the right to keep his personal notes. — based on President Ronald Reagan’s retention of similar documents for decades.
In his interview with investigators, Mr. Biden said his notebooks were “my property” and said “every president before me did the same thing,” pointing to Mr. Reagan.
The special prosecutor said Mr. Biden was wrong about the law, but admitted his view “finds some support in historical practice.”
Mr. Hur said the decision not to charge Mr. Biden for possessing the other classified documents was simpler: Prosecutors could not establish whether the classified documents discovered at Mr. Biden’s home had been deliberately kept or whether they were had been obtained during his vice. chair and poorly stored.
Classified documents discovered in Mr Biden’s Delaware garage in a «badly damaged box surrounded by household trash» indicated he may have simply forgotten he had it over the years, rather than having intentionally broke the law, Mr. Hur concluded.
Charlie Sauvage reports contributed.