Biden won't face charges for keeping classified records but DOJ criticizes 'risks to national security'
WASHINGTON – The Justice Department won't pursue criminal charges against President Joe Bien for his handling of classified documents, but the report contained multiple comments that may reinforce public concerns about the 81-year-old president's age and memory.
In a report made public Thursday, special counsel Robert Hur said criminal charges would not have been warranted for the classified documents found at his former office in Washington, D.C., and at his home in Delaware.
"Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen," according to the report, which noted in particular classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan.
The evidence doesn't establish Biden's "guilt beyond a reasonable doubt," the report concluded.
The report also said the president's document practices "present serious risks to national security," and that Biden presented himself "as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory."
Report finds issues with Biden's practices
Biden's lawyers Richard Sauber and Bob Bauer took issue with Hur's comments about Biden's age and memory, in a letter to the special counsel. "We do not believe that the report's treatment of President Biden's memory is accurate or appropriate," Sauber and Bauer wrote. "The report uses highly prejudicial language to describe a commonplace occurrence among witnesses: a lack of recall of years-old events."
An examination of both aggravating and mitigating factors in the case also led to the conclusion that criminal prosecution isn't warranted, Hur said. The department previously declined to pursue charges against former Vice President Mike Pence, who had classified documents at home in Indiana.
"Over my career in public service, I have always worked to protect America’s security," Biden said in a statement released after Hur's report. "I take these issues seriously and no one has ever questioned that."
Hur’s inquiry into Biden's classified documents ran parallel to the investigation by special counsel Jack Smith into former President Donald Trump. But whereas Biden alerted authorities about the classified records, most of Trump’s were seized under subpoena and during an FBI search of Mar-a-Lago.
The Presidential Records Act of 1978 calls for the National Archives and Records Administration to take ownership of all White House records on inauguration day, after the end of an administration. In addition, several laws prohibit removing classified records from secure government facilities.
In Biden’s case, his personal lawyers were vacating a former office at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement on Nov. 2 when they discovered a “small number” of classified documents. Biden had used the office after leaving office as vice president in 2017 until his presidential campaign in 2020.
The White House disclosed in January that a second set of documents was recovered from a storage space in the garage of his Wilmington home.
In an implicit contrast with Trump, Biden's statement's noted he "cooperated completely, threw up no roadblocks, and sought no delays."
"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," he added.
FBI agents searched Trump's residence at Mar-a-Lago after his lawyers certified all classified records had been returned under a subpoena, but the former president had retained additional records. FBI agents seized 11,000 records from Mar-a-Lago and retrieved a combined more than 300 classified records last year through National Archives letters in January 2023, a subpoena last June and the search last August.
Biden responds to report by blasting Donald Trump
Addressing the House Democratic caucus at a retreat in Leesburg, Va. Biden said, “I was especially pleased to see the senior Special Counsel make clear there’s stark differences between this case and Donald Trump.”
"I'll continue to do what I've always done ? stay focused on my job, like you do ? my job of being president, that means going to work with all of you every single day I can," Biden told lawmakers.
Biden made no mention about the other parts of the report.
Trump has denied wrongdoing. He contends he was negotiating with the National Archives about which presidential records he could keep and that he declassified the secret records, despite a lack of documentation to demonstrate that.
“I have the absolute right to do whatever I want with them,” Trump told a CNN town hall on May 10.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: DOJ won't charge Biden for classified records at former office, home
