Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report about the criminal investigation into President Joe Biden for illegally retaining classified documents from his time as a senator and vice president has been released, and Hur has decided not to prosecute Biden because of his cognitive decline, despite confirming that he broke the law.
BREAKING: These are some photos of the classified docs President Biden stored in the garage in Delaware, according to Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report. Some of these documents included classified information about Afghanistan, the report says. No criminal charges recommended. pic.twitter.com/IvMQbJglse
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) February 8, 2024
The report confirmed that Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen” — but prosecutors still claim that “no criminal charges are warranted in this matter.”
“Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen,” the report stated. “These materials included (1) marked classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, and (2) notebooks containing Mr. Biden’s handwritten entries about issues of national security and foreign policy implicating sensitive intelligence sources and methods. FBI agents recovered these materials from the garage, offices, and basement den in Mr. Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware home.”
However, Biden’s severe cognitive decline was enough for prosecutors to dismiss all of his illegal actions.
“Mr. Biden’s memory was significantly limited, both during his recorded interviews with the ghostwriter in 2017 [with whom he shared classified materials], and in his interview with our office in 2023,” the report said in its executive summary. “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.”
Prosecutors further claimed that Biden’s cognitive decline would make it “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.”
Hur noted in the report that recordings from Biden’s 2017 interview with the ghostwriter showed that he was already in cognitive decline, as he was “struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries.” The special counsel added that even back then Biden was showing signs of “diminished faculties and faulty memory.”
According to Robert Hur’s report, Biden’s ghost writer deleted audio recordings after the special counsel was appointed.
Yet Hur declined to charge him with obstruction.
Reminder that two Mar-a-Lago employees were charged along with Trump for moving boxes of documents. pic.twitter.com/yeQ7KhTix6
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) February 8, 2024
“In his interview with our office, Mr. Biden’s memory was worse,” Hur wrote. “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 did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died,” the report continued. “And his memory appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him. Among other things, he mistakenly said he ‘had a real difference’ of opinion with General Karl Eikenberry, when, in fact, Eikenberry was an ally whom Mr. Biden cited approvingly in his Thanksgiving memo to President Obama.”
This report has elicited serious concerns about Biden’s re-election efforts, especially as polls show that a significant majority of the electorate has concerns about the 81-year-old president’s mental and physical health.
The White House has already expressed outrage over the report, with Special Counsel to the President Richard Sauber and Biden’s personal counsel Bob Bauer sending a letter to Hur complaining that they “do not believe that the report’s treatment of President Biden’s memory is accurate or appropriate.”
Biden’s lawyers have also slammed the report, arguing that it used “highly prejudicial language to describe a commonplace occurrence among witnesses: a lack of recall of years-old events.”
Meanwhile, Biden’s critics have already expressed outrage that the president was not charged for his crimes, while former President Donald Trump is facing charges for significantly less credible reasons.
Today’s report from Robert Hur tells us two things:
There’s a double standard of justice in this country.
And Joe Biden isn’t fit for office.
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) February 8, 2024
They have also expressed concern that Biden should not be president if the assertions about his cognitive decline are true.
🚨@DonaldJTrumpJr reacts to the DOJ Report calling out Joe Biden’s “poor memory” and calling into question his mental state:
“How can Joe Biden be ‘an elderly man with good intentions’ who’s clearly incapable of remembering these things — also be the leader of the free world?… pic.twitter.com/g4TFBttf6G
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) February 9, 2024
