President Biden, speaking at the White House on Thursday, sought to emphasize his cooperation with the investigation and defend his suitability for office.
Nathan Howard/Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
Nathan Howard/Getty Images
President Biden, speaking at the White House on Thursday, sought to emphasize his cooperation with the investigation and defend his suitability for office.
Nathan Howard/Getty Images
A year-long investigation into President Biden’s handling of classified material will not result in any charges. Special counsel Robert Hur concluded in his report that the evidence uncovered by investigators fell short of “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” that Biden knowingly retained and disclosed classified materials.
Despite the president’s legal victory, the report was politically damaging for Biden. It details the shoddy handling of classified documents and specifically points out deficiencies in Biden’s memory when discussing information during his interview with the special counsel – which contradicts existing political concerns about his age and mental acuity. Increases anxiety.
The report comes at a sensitive time for the president: He is in a tight race with Donald Trump, his predecessor as president, as the frontrunner for the Republican nomination; His job approval remains low, as does his approach to handling the economy and, in particular, immigration, in addition to persistent concerns about his age. The Special Counsel’s claim that he is “an elderly person with poor memory” will hardly help.
Still, Biden tried to dispute unfavorable parts of the report in a fiery press conference Thursday night, insisting on defending his cooperation with the investigation and his suitability for office.
Here’s what you need to know about the report and the fallout that began immediately after its release.
What is included in the report
The report outlines what materials were exposed, how they were treated, what is known about them — including during Biden’s time as vice president — as well as legal implications about whether the allegations were justified. Logic is also included.
There are photos of boxes that contained classified material, including a damaged box containing documents about Afghanistan that were in the garage of Biden’s home in Delaware. A collapsed dog crate, a dog bed, a Zappos box, an empty The bucket was found near. The broken lamp is wrapped in duct tape, potting soil and synthetic firewood.”
The majority of the report focuses on two types of classified materials – documents about the military and foreign policy in Afghanistan; and notebooks that Biden used throughout his presidency to combine personal reflections, meeting notes and other writings.
Biden relied exclusively on his notebooks when writing his memoir Promise me, dad, which was published in 2017 and reflects the year his eldest son Beau died of cancer two years earlier.
In conversations with his ghostwriter for the book, he read from those notebooks – and shared classified material on at least three occasions while doing so.
In his interview for the special counsel investigation, Biden “emphatically declared that his notebooks are ‘my property,’ and that ‘every president before me has done the exact same thing,’ that is, handwritten material after his term in office. kept, even if they contain classified material.” He also referred to diaries kept by former President Ronald Reagan after his term in office.
why is there no charge
While the special counsel’s investigation found some evidence that Biden knew he had some materials that contained classified information, the report said the evidence ultimately did not support charging him.
Hur said the evidence does not establish Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and that it would be difficult to prove that Biden knowingly intended to break the law.
For example:
“Mr. Biden’s decision to have (ghostwriter Mark) Zvonitzer read almost verbatim notes, which Mr. Biden had identified as potentially classified, cannot be justified. But the evidence does not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he intended to share classified information. Mr. Biden told Zvonitzer that he was ‘not sure’ whether the notebook excerpt he read was classified. That’s enough to raise reasonable doubt about whether Mr. Biden has acted deliberately.
Hur outlined ways in which a jury could side with Biden and ultimately not convict him of the missteps found by the special counsel.
The report said that in front of the jury, Biden would likely “present himself … as he did during his interview with our office, as a sympathetic, well-intentioned, elderly man with a failing memory.” “
what has been the reaction
Biden’s lawyers took direct issue with the characterization and several references to his memory in a letter to the special counsel attached to the public report.
Special counsel to the president Richard Sauber and Biden’s personal lawyer Bob Bauer said, “The report uses highly prejudicial language to describe a common phenomenon among witnesses: a lack of recollection of years-old events.”
The lawyers also noted that the five-hour interview with Biden began the day after the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, when Biden held a series of meetings with foreign leaders and his national security team.
At his press conference Thursday, Biden defended his mental acuity, saying his memory was “fine.” He reacted angrily to Hur’s description of a portion of the interview where Hur said Biden did not remember when his son died.
“How dare he bring it up?” Biden said it was “none of his business” and was overcome with emotion. “I don’t need to remind anyone when he passed away.”
Republicans, including Trump — who is likely to face Biden in the general election in November — immediately insisted that Biden should no longer be president.
Trump described the lack of charges as evidence of a “two-tier system of justice.” Trump faces more than three dozen federal criminal charges related to his own handling of classified information after boxes of classified material were found in unsecured locations at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida.
Trump and his allies have pleaded not guilty in the federal case, which is being prosecuted by special counsel Jack Smith.
Unlike Biden’s case, where the president agreed to a search of his assets and voluntarily spoke to investigators, Trump is accused of actively trying to obstruct authorities from recovering classified material.
what happens next
The investigation into Hoor is closed, but the political fallout has begun. Biden will have to take a fresh look at his age and convince voters that he should serve another term as president.
In his press conference, which began with his defense against critical parts of the report, Biden, responding to a question about the current hostage negotiations with Israel and Hamas, mistakenly said that Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi “Mexico Was the President of.”
At off-camera events in recent days, Biden has mixed up the names of foreign leaders three times, calling French President Emmanuel Macron “Mitterrand” and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel as “Helmut Kohl.” François Mitterrand and Kohl were former leaders of France and Germany respectively.
Meanwhile, Trump is awaiting trial in several cases, including the Mar-a-Lago documents matter. And hours before the Hur report dropped on Thursday, the Supreme Court was hearing arguments about whether Trump could be disqualified from voting in Colorado for his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
