WASHINGTON DC—On February 5, Special Counsel Robert Hur reported his findings to Attorney General Merrick Garland in the case of classified documents found in the Delaware home of President Joe Biden, and at the Penn-Biden Center in Washington DC.
In his report, Special Counsel Hur, who was appointed by Garland to oversee the case documented all of the classified documents found in the President’s home. Documents found in the President’s residents were top secret, highly confidential, and some even watermarked. All were noted in the Special Counsel’s report.
On February 8, multiple news headlines read, “No charge for Biden in Classified Documents case.” The conservatives seemed to have taken a collective gasp at the news. With Donald Trump there were no concessions made. The moment the word got out that there may be documents in the former Presidents care, Mar-a-Lago had an FBI raid on the property.
In Biden’s case there was no such fanfare. The case has just now been settled with no consequences for the found documents that Hur reported, “had to have the watermark taken off,” and other instances.
Hur explains it all in his Executive Summary. Full text may be found on the Department of Justice website.
“We conclude that no criminal charges are warranted in this matter. (1) We would reach the same conclusion even if Department of Justice policy did not foreclose criminal charges against a sitting president. (2) 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… .”
On page six of Hur’s report, Special Counsel takes Biden’s condition into consideration.
“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.”
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.
We conclude the evidence is not sufficient to convict, and we decline to recommend prosecution of Mr. Biden for his retention of the classified Afghanistan documents.”
To read the entire documentation made available by the DOJ is to understand that Joe Biden will not be made to stand trial for deliberately keeping classified documents of war projects he had a personal stake in during his eight years as Vice President.
Biden became publicly irate when he heard that the report reflected his loss of memory. He defended himself vehemently.
News headlines read that Biden was unfairly criticized by Special Counsel Hur.
