Joe Biden “willfully retained” and disclosed highly classified materials when he was a private citizen, risking “serious damage to America’s national security,” Special Counsel Robert Hur’s investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents found.
Despite this, the Biden Justice Department says no criminal charges will be leveled against him, in part, because his cognitive state is so “diminished” his attorneys would have been able to use his inability to remember anything about the documents as a defense.
“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,” Hur wrote in the eye-opening 388-page report, released Thursday after a yearlong investigation.
The report suggested that Biden lacks “a mental state of willfulness” needed to prosecute.
Special Counsel just reported that Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials” and engaged in practices that “present serious risks to national security.”
Even more disturbing: Biden would lack a “mental state of willfulness” necessary to prosecute! pic.twitter.com/v9fKoKH17I
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) February 8, 2024
Biden’s memory “appeared to have significant limitations,” investigators found.
The best case for charges reportedly involved his possession, as a private citizen, of classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan.
But sympathetic prosecutors said it was possible that Biden could have found those records at his Virginia home in 2017 and then forgotten about them soon after.
Biden apparently could not remember basic facts about Afghanistan during his recorded conversations with Mark Zwonitzer, the ghost writer for his 2017 book “promise Me Dad.”
“Mr. Biden’s recorded conversations with Zwonitzer from 2017 are often painfully slow, with Mr. Biden struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries,” the report states.
The report said, Biden insisted that the notebooks were “my property” and that “every president before me has done the exact same thing.”
The Special Counsel said Biden’s “apparent lapses and failures in February and April 2017 will likely appear consistent with the diminished faculties and faulty memory he showed in Zwonitzer’s interview recordings and in our interview of him.”
“Therefore, we conclude that the evidence does not establish that Mr. Biden willfully disclosed national defense information to Zwonitzer,” the report says.
🚨Special Counsel Hur found both: (1) “faulty memory”; and (2) “diminished faculties.” That second finding is hugely significant. It is a finding the President not only has memory issues, but also has cognitive impairment. No surprise the White House strenuously objected to… pic.twitter.com/rsPXdfaTqc
— Oversight Project (@OversightPR) February 8, 2024
Biden’s memory was allegedly “worse” when he was interviewed by the Special Counsel.
“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?”),” according to the Special Counsel. “He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died,” the report adds.
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. Biden cited approvingly in his Thanksgiving memo to President Obama.
The Special Counsel suggested that Biden’s mental decline would be used as a defense by his lawyers.
“In a case where the government must prove that Mr. Biden knew he had possession of the classified Afghanistan documents after the vice presidency and chose to keep those documents, knowing he was violating the law, we expect that at trial, his attorneys would emphasize these limitations in his recall,” the report says.
“The DOJ finds their boss and fellow Democrat hack too “sympathetic” to bring charges against,” wrote legendary conservative blogger Ace of Spades HQ. “This is an admission of political bias.”
It’s also, of course, an admission that Joe Biden’s cognitive decline is so severe that it’s considered a valid defense to the admitted crime of “willful” retention of classified documents.
The report, nevertheless, represents a scathing assessment of Biden’s handling of sensitive government documents, the according to the Associated Press.
The documents have classification markings up to the Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information Level and were found in a box in Biden’s Delaware garage “that contained other materials of great significance to him and that he appears to have personally used and accessed.”
Photographs included in the report showed some of the classified Afghanistan documents stored in a worn cardboard box stored in his garage, apparently in a loose collection with other household items, including a ladder and a wicker basket.
Classified documents from the Obama administration were also found in Biden’s basement den, according to the report. Classified documents from his time in the Senate in the 1970s and 1980s were also found in his garage .
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. pic.twitter.com/IvMQbJglse
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) February 8, 2024
“Mr. Biden was known to remove and keep classified material from his briefing books for future use, and his staff struggled — and sometimes failed — to retrieve those materials,” the report states. “And there was no procedure at all for tracking some of the classified material Mr. Biden received outside of his briefing books”
“We would reach the same conclusion even if Department of Justice policy did not foreclose criminal charges against a sitting president,” the report said.
Incredibly, a destruction of evidence charge was not leveled against Zwonitzer even though the report acknowledges that he destroyed evidence.
“At some point after learning of Special Counsel Hur’s appointment, Mr. Biden’s ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer, deleted digital audio recordings of his conversations with Mr. Biden during the writing of the book, Promise Me, Dad,” the report states, adding: “The recordings had significant evidentiary value.”
Fox News’ White House correspondent reported that the White House is fuming about the embarrassing report.
DOOCY: "This is a very embarrassing report for a president in his 80's…"
Joe Biden's sheer mental incapacity is now fully on the record for everybody to see, and no amount of spin from the White House will effectively convince the American people otherwise. pic.twitter.com/jmiKTyuzms
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) February 8, 2024
White House lawyers reportedly wrote to Hur demanding that he revise his descriptions of Biden’s cognitive state.
Biden's lawyers wrote to Hur asking that he revise descriptions of the President's memory – notable given voter concerns about his mental capacity. pic.twitter.com/Eke92sZH2s
— Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) February 8, 2024
Update:
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), and Majority Whip Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) released the following joint statement Thursday afternoon regarding the Special Counsel report:
The Special Counsel’s finding that President Biden ‘willfully retained and disclosed classified materials’ and engaged in practices that ‘present serious risks to national security’ is deeply disturbing.
Not only does it demonstrate the President’s recklessness, but exposes a two-tiered system of justice that is indicting one President with politically motivated charges while carrying water for another amid similar allegations.
Among the most disturbing parts of this report is the Special Counsel’s justification for not recommending charges: namely that the President’s memory had such ‘significant limitations’ that he could not convince a jury that the President held a ‘mental state of willfulness’ that a serious felony requires.
A man too incapable of being held accountable for mishandling classified information is certainly unfit for the Oval Office.
“ … at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, … as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” .
Really? You mean he didn’t present himself as the corrupt, compromised political criminal he is as head of the Biden crime family?