Justice Department will not charge Biden in classified documents probe
Last edited Thu Feb 8, 2024, 05:52 PM - Edit history (1)
Source: NPR
Updated February 8, 2024 4:23 PM ET
President Biden willfully held onto and disclosed classified materials after leaving the Obama administration and becoming a private citizen, but his actions do no warrant criminal charges, according to a Justice Department special counsel report report released Thursday.
The nearly 350-page report from special counsel Robert Hur says the evidence did not establish Biden's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. "We conclude that no criminal charges are warranted in this matter," the report says. "We would reach the same conclusion even if Department of Justice policy did not foreclose criminal charges against a sitting president."
White the White House agreed with the decision that chargers were not warranted, a letter, lawyers for the president said "we disagree with a number of inaccurate and inappropriate comments in the Special Counsel's report" on the classified documents, including what it called "highly prejudicial language" to describe the president's memory.
White House lawyer Richard Sauber said the report shows that Biden cooperated with the investigation and said "mistakes when packing documents ... are unfortunately a common occurrence." He said that Biden would take "new, substantive action to help prevent such mistakes in the future" but did not say what that action would be.
Read more: https://www.npr.org/2024/02/08/1200897377/biden-classified-documents-investigation
Link to report (site with embedded PDF reader) - https://www.npr.org/2024/02/08/1229805332/special-counsel-report-biden-classified-documents
Link to report (PDF) - https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24414122/report-from-special-counsel-robert-k-hur-february-2024.pdf
Article updated.
Original article -
A Justice Department special counsel has recommended no criminal charges be brought against President Biden in connection with the classified documents that were found at his Delaware home and a think-tank office in Washington, D.C.
"We conclude that no criminal charges are warranted in this matter," special counsel Robert Hur says in a more than 300-page report released Thursday. "We would reach the same conclusion even if Department of Justice policy did not foreclose criminal charges against a sitting president."
Hur's decision not to pursue charges against the president brings an end to a lengthy investigation that began after Biden's lawyers found classified documents in November 2022 in the offices of the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C.
Biden's personal attorneys turned over those materials, which were said to date to his time as vice president, to the National Archives and Records Administration. Federal agents then found a small number of additional classified documents in a search of Biden's home in Wilmington, Del. Agents also searched Biden's vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Del., but did not turn up any sensitive materials.
= new reply since forum marked as read
They are describing Trump appointed Special Counsel Hur's nasty opinion statements about Biden’s alleged poor memory as if fact. The report reminds me of the report Comey issued when he decided not to prosecute Hillary Clinton over her emails, but then proceeded to trash her. That totally violates DOJ policy. You're not supposed to trash people when you decline to bring charges.
ABC headline:
Special counsel: Biden 'willfully' disclosed classified materials, but no criminal charges warranted
President Joe Biden “willfully” retained and disclosed highly classified materials when he was a private citizen, including documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan and other sensitive national security matters
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/biden-call-redactions-special-counsel-report-classified-documents-107065333
By ERIC TUCKER Associated Press, LINDSAY WHITEHURST Associated Press, ZEKE MILLER Associated Press, and COLLEEN LONG Associated Press
February 8, 2024, 10:52 AM
In declining to prosecute Biden, Hur’s office also cited what it said was Biden’s “limited memory” both during his 2017 recorded conversations with the ghostwriter and in an interview with investigators last year.
“Given Mr. Biden’s limited precision and recall during his interviews with his ghostwriter and with our office, jurors may hesitate to place too much evidentiary weight on a single eight-word utterance to his ghostwriter about finding classified documents in Virginia, in the absence of other, more direct evidence.”
“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,” investigators wrote.
There is recent Justice Department precedence for criminal charges against individuals accused of sharing classified information with biographers or ghostwriters. Gen. David Petraeus pleaded guilty to doing exactly that in 2015 and was sentenced to probation........................
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another ABC headline:
Special counsel calls out Biden's 'faulty memory'; his attorneys slam that as false, 'inflammatory'
The president's mental recall is mentioned repeatedly in the new report.
NBC headline
Biden won’t be charged in classified docs case; special counsel cites instances of ‘poor memory’
The decision caps off a yearlong saga and means Donald Trump remains the only president in history to face criminal charges.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/joe-biden/special-counsel-says-evidence-biden-willfully-retained-disclosed-class-rcna96666
