No charges for Biden after Special Counsel probe into improper handling of classified documents

Posted 84 days ago

From WWW.FOXNEWS.COM

Special Counsel Robert Hur will not recommend criminal charges against President Biden for mishandling classified documents, according to his report after a months-long investigation into the president's alleged improper retention of classified records.

Hur has been investigating Biden’s improper retention of classified records since last year. Those records included classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, among other records related to national security and foreign policy which Hur said implicated "sensitive intelligence sources and methods."

"We conclude that no criminal charges are warranted in this matter," the report states. "We would reach the same conclusion even if the Department of Justice policy did not foreclose criminal charges against a sitting president."

The special counsel also described Biden as "a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory."

"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 wrote in the report. "Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone from 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."

But Hur said his investigation "uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen."

The materials included "marked classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, and notebooks containing Mr. Biden’s handwritten entries about issues of national security and foreign policy implicating sensitive intelligence sources and methods."

Hur said FBI agents recovered the materials from "the garages, offices, and basement den in Mr. Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware home."

But Hur said that the evidence "does not establish Mr. Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt." :

"Prosecution of Mr. Biden is also unwarranted based on our consideration of the aggravating and mitigating factors set forth in the Department of Justice’s Principles of Federal Prosecution," the report states. "For these reasons, we decline prosecution of Mr. Biden."

The White House was given the opportunity to review the report for privilege after Hur initially submitted his report on Feb. 5, and did not seek any redaction to the report. The report was transmitted to Congress Thursday afternoon.

Damning photos were included in the report — photos that the Biden campaign reportedly feared could have a negative impact on his 2024 re-election bid.

Classified records were first found inside the Washington, D. C., offices of the Penn Biden Center think tank on Nov. 2, 2022, but only disclosed to the public in early January 2023.

A second stash of classified documents was also found inside the garage of the president’s home in Wilmington in December, but revealed to the public earlier this month, prompting Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint former U. S. Attorney Rob Hur to serve as special counsel.

Days later, additional classified documents were found in the president’s home in Delaware. The FBI conducted a more than 12-hour search of Biden’s Delaware home Friday, seizing additional classified records.

Biden has defended the storing of classified documents in the past.

"By the way, my Corvette is in a locked garage, so it's not like they're sitting out on the street," he once said.

In a statement after Special Counsel released the report, Biden said he 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," Biden's statement continued.... (Read more)










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