U.S. President Joe Biden answers questions from the press following his comments about reducing costs for American families in the South Court Auditorium of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on Thursday, Jan. 12, 2023.
Demetrius Freeman | The Washington Post | Getty Images
President Joe Biden ‘deliberately retained and disclosed classified material after his vice presidency,’ according to final report released Thursday by a Justice Department special counsel.
But special counsel Robert Hurr said he declined to prosecute Biden over his handling of the material, which included documents on military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, and notebooks containing Biden’s national security listings.
The FBI found this material in the garage, offices and basement of Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware.
“Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden intentionally retained and disclosed classified material after his vice presidency when he was a private individual,” Hur wrote.
But that evidence “does not prove Mr. Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt,” the special counsel wrote.
Hur wrote in his nearly 400-page report: “We also felt that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during his interview, as a nice, well-meaning, older man. with a bad memory.”
“We conclude that criminal charges are not warranted in this matter,” the report said. “We reach the same conclusion even if Justice Department policy did not preclude criminal charges against a sitting president.”
The special counsel said Biden had shared some classified information with his ghostwriter for his second memoir, “Promise Me, Dad,” published in 2017, which Hur said did not appear to contain any classified information.
The report comes nearly 13 months after Attorney General Merrick Garland named Hur the special counsel to lead the investigation into classified files found in the president’s office and residence in late 2022.
Hur’s report lands in the middle of a 2024 presidential race already fraught with legal intrigue and outrage.
Biden faces a potential rematch against former President Donald Trump, who is facing criminal charges over classified documents he took with him when he left the White House in 2021. When archivists noticed they were missing and asked Trump to return them, he denied.
Trump was indicted in June on 37 felonies, including knowingly withholding national defense information, violating Espionage Act.
Trump was in possession of hundreds more classified documents than Biden — more than 300 in all, including 102 seized during an FBI raid on Trump’s Palm Beach resort in August 2022. Trump has pleaded not guilty to the categories.
Hurr’s report Thursday said the materials recovered from Biden spanned his career in national office from 1973 when he became a U.S. senator and his two terms as vice president under former President Barack Obama from 2009 to early 2017.
During his career, Biden “saw himself as a historical figure,” and during that time collected documents and artifacts related to “significant issues and events in his career,” the report said.
“He used these materials to write memoirs published in 2007 and 2017 to document his legacy and to cite as evidence that he was a presidential man,” Hur wrote.
Richard Sauer, who is Biden’s special counsel, said in a statement: “We are pleased that this investigation has concluded and that the Special Counsel [Hur] it was found that “criminal prosecution in this matter is not warranted,” even though the President was out of office and in private.
Sauer said the report acknowledged that Biden “cooperated fully” from the beginning of the investigation and his team “immediately reported that classified documents were found” and returned to the administration.
“The simple truth is that President Biden takes classified information seriously and tries to protect it.” Sauer said. “He has spent decades at the highest levels of government defending and advancing America’s national security and foreign policy interests and protecting its secrets.”
Sauer said Biden took issue with “a number of inaccurate and inappropriate comments” in the report. He did not identify these comments.
Biden’s timeline
On November 2, 2022, Biden’s personal lawyers found classified documents in a locked closet at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, the president’s lawyer said.
The files were discovered as lawyers were packing up and preparing to leave the think tank’s office, which Biden had “periodically” used as a private person before launching his 2020 presidential campaign, according to lawyer Richard Sauber.
The records appeared to date back to the Obama administration, in which Biden served as vice president from 2008 to 2016, Sauber said. The White House counsel’s office contacted the National Archives the day the documents were disclosed, he added.
The statement by Biden’s special counsel came on January 9, 2023, after CBS News first revealed the existence of the classified files.
Three days later, Sauber show up that Biden’s lawyers had found additional classified documents in a storage area in the garage of Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware.
After making that discovery on Dec. 20, 2022, those attorneys contacted then-U.S. Attorney for Chicago John Laws, whom Garland had originally tapped to handle the matter, according to Bob Bauerone of Biden’s personal lawyers.
On Jan. 11, 2023, Biden’s lawyers located another document with classified markings in a room next to the garage of the Wilmington home, Bauer said.
They told Laus the next morning, Bauer said. Later that day, Garland was announced was appointing Hurr as special counsel to investigate the matter.
The attorney general can appoint a special counsel to conduct an investigation or prosecution that would be a conflict of interest if conducted by the Justice Department itself.
Hur was appointed by Trump in 2018 to serve as the US attorney for Maryland. Resigned in 2021, later becoming a partner in the Washington, DC office of the law firm Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher.
The White House has defended its decision to withhold discovery of the records for more than two months, saying it balanced public transparency with the need to cooperate with an ongoing federal investigation.
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