Special counsel Robert Hur wrote that he was concerned jurors would not believe that Joe Biden “willfully” kept classified documents, and that was one of the reasons why he does not think the president should face charges.
“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 writes.
“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.”
Hur wrote that: “Mr. Biden’s memory was significantly limited, both during his recorded interviews with the ghostwriter in 2017, and in his interview with our office in 2023. And his cooperation with our investigation, including by reporting to the government that the Afghanistan documents were in his Delaware garage, will likely convince some jurors that he made an innocent mistake, rather than acting willfully – that is, with intent to break the law – as the statute requires.”
In addition to the statement from Donald Trump himself, Make America Great Again Inc. – a super PAC supporting the former president’s campaign for election in 2024, has released its own comment on Hur’s report.
“If you’re too senile to stand trial, then you’re too senile to be president,” said Alex Pfeiffer, communications director for Make America Great Again Inc. “Joe Biden is unfit to lead this nation.”
Former president Donald Trump has released a statement via his campaign regarding the findings in the report from Robert Hur, saying “THIS HAS NOW PROVEN TO BE A TWO-TIERED SYSTEM OF JUSTICE AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL SELECTIVE PROSECUTION!” [sic].
Trump referenced his own classified documents case, in which he is charged of willful retention of national defense information, false statements and representations, conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding a document or record, corruptly concealing a document, concealing a document in a federal investigation and a scheme to conceal. That case is expected to go to trial in May 2024.
The Biden Documents Case is 100 times different and more severe than mine. I did nothing wrong, and I cooperated far more. What Biden did is outrageously criminal – He had 50 years of documents, 50 times more than I had, and “WILLFULLY RETAINED” them. I was covered by the Presidential Records Act, Secret Service was always around, and GSA delivered the documents. Deranged Jack Smith should drop this Case immediately. ELECTION INTERFERENCE.
Republican chairman James Comer of the House committee on oversight and accountability has issued the following statement on the report from special counsel Robert Hur:
Americans expect equal justice under the law and are dismayed the Justice Department continues to allow Joe Biden to live above it. Joe Biden willfully retained classified documents for years in unsecure locations and intentionally disclosed them yet faces no consequences for his actions. The House Oversight Committee has been investigating Joe Biden’s mishandling of classified documents and we have uncovered key facts that unravel the White House’s and President Biden’s personal attorney’s narrative of events. Additionally, important questions remain about the extent of Joe Biden retaining sensitive materials related to specific countries involving his family’s influence peddling schemes that brought in millions for the Bidens. While the Justice Department has closed its investigation, the Oversight Committee’s investigation continues. We will continue to provide the transparency and accountability owed to the American people.
In addition to the statement, Comer said the White House was not cooperating with interviews the committee has requested with current and former White House staff who were involved with organizing, moving and removing boxes that contained classified materials.
He stated that the report confirmed Biden retained documents related to China and Ukraine, “two countries the Bidens have solicited and received millions of dollars from”.
You can read special counsel Robert Hur’s report into Joe Biden’s possession of classified documents, as well as the rebuttal from the president’s attorneys, below:
Attorneys for Joe Biden objected to special counsel Robert Hur repeatedly mentioning the president’s memory problems in his report.
Referring to his conversation with Mark Zwonitzer, ghostwriter of his 2017 memoir Promise Me, Dad, Hur writes: “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.”
He later goes on to describe Biden as showing “diminished faculties and faulty memory” in his conversations with Zwonitzer.
In a letter written to Hur dated earlier this week and included in the report, the president’s special counsel Richard Sauber and personal attorney Bob Bauer took issue with the special counsel’s language:
We do not believe that the report’s treatment of President Biden’s memory is accurate or appropriate. The report uses highly prejudicial language to describe a commonplace occurrence among witnesses: a lack of recall of years-old events. Such comments have no place in a Department of Justice report, particularly one that in the first paragraph announces that no criminal charges are ‘warranted’ and that ‘the evidence does not establish Mr. Biden’s guilt.’
They continue:
Not only do you treat the President differently from other witnesses when discussing his limited recall of certain years-ago events, but you also do so on occasions in prejudicial and inflammatory terms. You refer to President Biden’s memory on at least nine occasions – a number that is itself gratuitous.
Sauber and Bauer requested Hur “revisit your descriptions of President Biden’s memory”. He apparently did not do so.
Special counsel Robert Hur included in his report photos of where Joe Biden’s classified documents were stored:
In a just-released statement, Joe Biden said he “threw up no roadblocks” to Robert Hur’s investigation of his possession of classified documents, and notes he spoke to the special counsel even in the aftermath of Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel.
The president’s comments came after Hur’s report noted that it would be difficult to convince jurors the “elderly” Biden intentionally kept government secrets, and related his inability to remember important dates during interviews with the special counsel.
Here’s what Biden had to say, in full:
The Special Counsel released today its findings about its look into my handling of classified documents. I was pleased to see they reached the conclusion I believed all along they would reach – that there would be no charges brought in this case and the matter is now closed.
This was an exhaustive investigation going back more than 40 years, even into the 1970s when I was a young Senator. I cooperated completely, threw up no roadblocks, and sought no delays. In fact, I was so determined to give the Special Counsel what they needed that I went forward with five hours of in-person interviews over two days on October 8th and 9th of last year, even though Israel had just been attacked on October 7th and I was in the middle of handling an international crisis. I just believed that’s what I owed the American people so they could know no charges would be brought and the matter closed.
Over my career in public service, I have always worked to protect America’s security. I take these issues seriously and no one has ever questioned that.
Special counsel Robert Hur wrote that in an interview last year, Joe Biden struggled to recall key chapters in his personal and professional life:
In his interview with our office, Mr. Biden’s memory was worse. 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?”). He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died. 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. Eiden cited approvingly in his Thanksgiving memo to President Obama.
Biden’s lack of ability to remember things would make it hard to prosecute him, Hur said:
We also expect many jurors to be struck by the place where the Afghanistan documents were ultimately found in Mr. Biden’s Delaware home: in a badly damaged box in the garage, near a collapsed dog crate, a dog bed, a Zappos box, an empty bucket, a broken lamp wrapped with duct tape, potting soil, and synthetic firewood.
A reasonable juror could conclude that this is not where a person intentionally stores what he supposedly considers to be important classified documents, critical to his legacy. Rather, it looks more like a place a person stores classified documents he has forgotten about or is unaware of. We have considered – and investigated – the possibility that the box was intentionally placed in the garage to make it appear to be there by mistake, but the evidence does not support that conclusion.
Special counsel Robert Hur wrote that he was concerned jurors would not believe that Joe Biden “willfully” kept classified documents, and that was one of the reasons why he does not think the president should face charges.
“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 writes.
“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.”
Hur wrote that: “Mr. Biden’s memory was significantly limited, both during his recorded interviews with the ghostwriter in 2017, and in his interview with our office in 2023. And his cooperation with our investigation, including by reporting to the government that the Afghanistan documents were in his Delaware garage, will likely convince some jurors that he made an innocent mistake, rather than acting willfully – that is, with intent to break the law – as the statute requires.”
In his report, special counsel Robert Hur outlines how Joe Biden “willfully” disclosed classified documents, but says the available evidence does not establish the president’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
“Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen,” Hur wrote in the report’s executive summary. “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.”
Justice department policy prohibits bringing charges against a president while they are in office, but Hur notes that, even if that were not the case, he would not recommend charging Biden.
The special counsel then goes in to why he does not think jurors would convict Biden. The reasons include evidence suggests Biden simply forgot he had classified material, or that jurors believed that when he found it, he would not have realized he was breaking the law, because the former vice-president was so used to seeing such documents.
The White House was provided a copy of special counsel Robert Hur’s report into Joe Biden’s possession of classified documents, and reviewed it to determine if it revealed privileged information.
Ian Sams, a spokesman for the White House counsel, said no changes were made: “We notified the justice department at approximately 9.00 this morning that our privilege review has concluded. In keeping with his commitment to cooperation and transparency throughout this investigation, the president declined to assert privilege over any portion of the report.”
There will be no criminal charges filed in the classified documents investigation involving Joe Biden, Reuters is reporting, citing MSNBC, which is attributing that to an unnamed law enforcement official.
More details soon.
Meanwhile, Trump and Biden’s classified documents cases (in which the former president has been criminally charged and the current president has not) have similarities, there are also some notable differences.
The White House said Biden’s attorneys found a small number of classified documents and turned them over after discovery.
Trump resisted handing over boxes of classified material until a 2022 FBI search turned up about 100 classified documents, leading to obstruction of justice charges against Trump and two employees at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.
The White House said Biden and his team have cooperated with special counsel Robert Hur and his investigators. Biden cannot face federal criminal charges as a sitting president under a longstanding justice department policy.
The findings could pose political headaches for Biden who has sought to draw a contrast with Trump on issues of personal ethics and national security.
Hur’s report, and his decision not to bring criminal charges, are likely to fuel accusations of a double standard from Trump and his Republican allies.
[But] Trump was charged after prosecutors said he refused for months to turn over boxes containing presidential records he had taken to Mar-a-Lago and took steps to conceal the documents after the US government demanded their return. Trump has pleaded not guilty and a trial is scheduled for May but is likely to be delayed.
The special counsel in the Biden classified documents investigation focused on documents related to Biden’s service as vice-president in the Obama administration from 2009-2017 and from his prior tenure in the US Senate, Reuters reports.
Members of Joe Biden’s legal team found classified papers at the office of his Washington thinktank and the US president’s personal residence in Wilmington, Delaware.
Biden’s lead rival in the November election, former president Donald Trump, faces a 40-count federal indictment for retaining highly sensitive national security documents at his Florida resort after leaving office in 2021 and obstructing US government efforts to retrieve them.
The US Congress has been handed the special counsel report on Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents dating to his years as vice-president to Barack Obama, Reuters is reporting, citing an unnamed source familiar with the matter.
The US president was interviewed by special counsel Robert Hur last October and the case relates to actions taken before Biden took the White House.
Earlier last year US attorney general Merrick Garland appointed Hur to investigate Biden’s retention of classified documents from his time as vice-president.
At the time, lawyers for Biden reported having found classified documents at his home and former thinktank.
One day after he strengthened regulations on soot pollution, EPA Administrator Michael Regan spoke about pollution controls’ impact on children at an environmental advocacy event in Washington DC.
“This is deeply personal for me,” he said. “Every morning when I leave the house I’m kissing my ten year old son on the forehead and hoping to be the best dad and the best administrator that I can.”
Regan described Thursday’s new soot rule as a “gamechanger,” especially for young people, whose developing bodies are more vulnerable to the health effects of pollution – and who face various other hardships.
“This is one thing we’re taking off their plates,” he said.
Regan spoke at a meeting held by national environmental advocacy group Moms Clean Air Force on Thursday at the National Press Club.
Brenda Mallory, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, spoke earlier in the day about the Biden administration’s attempts to “infuse principles of justice and equity into everything.”
She touted one Biden administration program which allots 40% of certain environmental federal investments to communities most affected by the climate crisis and pollution.
Former first daughter Chelsea Clinton also spoke about environmental pollution at the event at the National Press Club.
“We know that in our warming climate, the dangers are particularly acute for our youngest,” she said.
Clinton spoke the children-focused efforts she is helming at the Clinton Foundation, of which she is vice-chair. One project: partnering with advocates working to keep schools open year-round, since they serve as not only educational facilities but also as cooling centers in many communities.
The Thursday event convened youth advocates, doctors, environmentalists, and public health advocates who called on Americans to work together to push for better regulations on air pollution.
“Your voice does matter,” said Nsedu Obot Witherspoon, who directs the Children’s Environmental Health Network. “A lot can really happen when mothers, parents, teachers, come together”
Moms Clean Air Force, an national environmental advocacy group, held a summit at the National Press Club on Thursday, featuring guests including Chelsea Clinton and Environmental Protection Agency administrator Michael Regan.
Founded in 2011, the organization works to strengthen protections from planet-heating and toxic pollution. It is made up of 1.5 million members, many of whom are mothers.
The event comes amid increasing public concern about the climate crisis and pollution, and before a presidential election that will prove crucial for environmental policy in the US.
The Biden administration is currently rushing to finalize key environmental protections, including tightened standards on emissions from power plants and vehicles’ tailpipes.
“We have enormous challenges in front of us,” said Dominique Browning, co-founder and director of Moms Clean Air Force.
“We have never felt greater urgency to get things done.”
Paul Billings, who is national senior vice president of public policy at the American Lung Association and was a panelist at Thursday’s event, said that in recent decades, political polarization has proved a major challenge in passing environmental protections. It should not be, he said, because “everyone has lungs.”
Panelists also discussed the ways children are disproportionately harmed by pollution and global warming, because their smaller, developing bodies are more vulnerable to health risks.
Another major challenge: the rise of mental health issues tied to concern about the climate crisis.“We’re seeing more and more children who are presenting with climate anxiety,” Dr Lisa Patel, executive director of the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health and pediatric hospitalist, said.
After about two hours of arguments, the supreme court’s nine justices seemed broadly skeptical of the effort to keep Donald Trump from the presidential ballot over his involvement in the January 6 insurrection. It is unclear when they will issue a ruling. Across the street at the Capitol, the Senate advanced a measure providing assistance to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, following a botched attempt to also include hardline immigration policy changes Republicans demanded, then decided they did not like. The GOP wants to make amendments to the legislation, and it’s unclear what its reception will be in the House, but progress on this long-running negotiation appears to finally be happening.
Here’s a recap of the day’s events thus far:
Trump listened in to the supreme courts arguments, which, to his ears, sounded “beautiful”.
Jason Murray, an attorney for the people challenging Trump’s eligibility, warned the supreme court that the question could “could come back with a vengeance” if he is allowed to run.
Law professor Derek Muller of the University of Notre Dame predicted the high court would rule quickly.
The Senate’s vote to advance a bill that will provide assistance to three countries Washington considers national security priorities is a sign of progress in what has been a tortuous and chaotic process.
Democrats have wanted for months to approve aid to the three countries, but the GOP, which controls the House and can block passage of legislation in the Senate using the filibuster, demanded they also agree to hardline immigration policy changes. But when those changes were announced earlier this week after months of bipartisan negotiation, Republicans decided they did not like them either, and Republican House speaker Mike Johnson said a bill pairing the border security changes with foreign aid money would not get a vote in his chamber.
Yesterday, the Senate voted down that version of the legislation after Republicans and some Democrats objected. The Democratic majority leader Chuck Schumer immediately moved to put up for a vote the legislation that funds only Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan, without addressing immigration policy at all. The Senate just a few minutes ago voted to advance that legislation.
But the story is far from over. It’s unclear if the House will approve the legislation, and Schumer said Senate Republicans want to make amendments before final passage:
We hope to reach an agreement with our Republican colleagues on amendments. Democrats have always been clear that we support having a fair and reasonable amendment process. During my time as majority leader, I have presided over more amendment votes than the Senate held in all four years of the previous administration. For the information of senators, we are going to keep working on this bill until the job is done.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
