Special counsel Robert Hur has concluded his report on President Biden’s handling of classified documents during his tenure as vice president, determining that criminal charges are not warranted.
The report, spanning 345 pages, emphasized that the evidence did not establish Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, leading to the conclusion that prosecution was unwarranted based on a consideration of aggravating and mitigating factors.
While the report cleared Biden of criminal charges, it did not spare criticism of his actions. The investigation revealed that Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after leaving the vice presidency, placing them in various locations, including his homes and offices, rather than sending them to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) as required.
President Biden (Credits: KRTV)
The detailed account in the report shed light on Biden’s final days as vice president and the subsequent years, where classified documents related to military and foreign policy in Afghanistan were found in multiple locations.
Notebooks containing Biden’s entries on national security and foreign policy matters, implicating sensitive intelligence sources and methods, were also discovered.
Despite acknowledging the serious risks to national security posed by Biden’s conduct, the special counsel asserted that criminal charges were not the appropriate remedy.
The report highlighted Biden’s note-taking habits during his vice presidency, including entries related to classified subjects like the President’s Daily Brief and National Security Council meetings.
These notebooks were later used as reference material for Biden’s 2017 memoir, “Promise Me, Dad,” with some contents shared with his ghostwriter.
The investigation conducted 173 interviews with 147 witnesses, including Biden himself, and collected over 7 million documents from both classified and unclassified sources.
The report acknowledged that Biden shared information, including classified details, from the notebooks with his ghostwriter. Although the ghostwriter deleted audio recordings made for the memoir upon learning of the special counsel’s appointment, the FBI managed to recover the deleted files.
While the report exposed lapses in Biden’s handling of classified information, it concluded that criminal charges were not warranted, considering potential defenses and plausible explanations for the documents ending up in various locations.
The recovery of deleted files from the ghostwriter’s computer provided valuable evidence, but the decision not to charge the ghostwriter with obstruction was made based on the overall findings.
