The Department of Justice finally released its long-awaited investigation into President Joe Biden’s mishandling handling of classified documents Thursday, delivering a damning assessment that he was an ‘elderly man with a poor memory.’
Although the repot did not recommend bringing charges against the 81-year-old president it provides a cascade of damaging findings about sensitive files found in Biden’s garage and personal office.
It says his habit of reading sensitive files to a ghostwriter posed a significant national security risk, for example.
One of the reasons they decided not to press charges was because ‘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’.
President Joe Biden will not be criminally charged with stashing classified documents in his garage and private office
Department of Justice photographs reveal boxes and boxes of files stored in unsecure locations, such as the garage of his home.
The report said there was some evidence to suggest that Biden was well aware that he was not allowed to keep classified handwritten notes after leaving office, pointing out that his long Washington career meant he was familiar ‘with the measures taken to safeguard classified information and the need for those measures to prevent harm to national security.’
Even so, notebooks crammed with classified information were stored in unlocked drawers at his home.
And it was not simply the case that the notebooks were misplaced and forgotten.
‘He consulted the notebooks liberally during hours of discussions with his ghostwriter and viewed them as highly private and valued possessions with which he was unwilling to part,’ writes special counsel Robert Hur.
Biden found himself in the spotlight after his predecessor Donald Trump was charged with illegally keeping classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home.
And Hur’s report will likely undermine the Biden campaign’s attempts to use the charges against Trump in the 2024 election.
Instead, there is ammunition for Trump, with a series of revelations about Biden’s memory. It describes his failure to remember key dates in his career and personal life when he was interviewed by investigators.
‘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 reportedly said.
‘He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died.’