Special Prosecutor: Biden will not be charged despite mishandling documents

(Patria) - US President Joe Biden will not be criminally prosecuted for taking classified national security documents when he left his post as US Vice President in 2017, according to a special prosecutor's report released yesterday.

Prosecutor Robert Hur said he decided not to file charges because Biden cooperated with the investigation and because he would likely elicit sympathy as a defendant during a trial, Reuters reports, as cited by VOA.

"We also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury – as he did when we interviewed him – as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory," Hur wrote.

Biden said he was glad the investigation concluded without charges.

"I am glad they reached the conclusion I always believed they would reach – that there would be no charges in this case and that the matter is now closed. I fully cooperated, I did not obstruct, nor did I seek delays.

In fact, I was so determined to give the special prosecutor everything he needed that I agreed to a five-hour interview over two days, October 8th and 9th of last year, even though Israel had just been attacked on October 7th and I was dealing with an international crisis," Biden said in a statement released by the White House.

Hur's conclusion will ensure that Biden, unlike his expected November election rival Donald Trump, is not at risk of ending up in prison for mishandling sensitive government documents, Reuters reports.

However, it could cause additional problems for the 81-year-old Biden as he tries to convince voters he is not too old to serve another four-year term.

Hur wrote that Biden's memory was "significantly limited" when the prosecution team interviewed him. Biden's lawyer defended the president's handling of the documents.

"As stated in the special prosecutor's report, the President has fully cooperated from day one. His team immediately reported the classified documents found to ensure they were promptly returned to the government because the President knows where they belong," Biden's legal counsel Richard Sauber said in a statement.

He also stated that he disagreed with "inaccurate and inadequate comments in the special prosecutor's report."

"Nevertheless, the most important decision the special prosecutor made – that no charges were necessary – is firmly based on the facts and evidence," Sauber stated.

A group associated with Trump's campaign immediately seized on Hur's comments about Biden's memory.

"If you're too senile to stand trial, then you're too senile to be president. Joe Biden is not fit to lead this nation," said Alex Pfeiffer, communications director for the Make America Great Again organization.

Biden took classified documents about the US war in Afghanistan and other security issues when he left his post as US Vice President in 2017, the report states.

Among the documents was a handwritten memo to then-President Barack Obama in 2009 opposing a troop surge in Afghanistan, as well as notes related to intelligence briefings and national security meetings, the investigation found.

Biden told a writer working on his memoir in February 2017, during a conversation at a rented home in Virginia, that he had "just found all the classified documents downstairs," the report states.

Hur wrote that Biden's actions "posed a serious risk to national security, given the possibility that highly sensitive information could be lost or exploited by US adversaries."

However, he added that the documents may have been transferred to Biden's home while he was still Vice President, when he had the authority to possess them.

Hur said Biden would not have been charged even if there wasn't a long-standing Justice Department practice of not indicting sitting presidents.

Members of Biden's legal team found the classified documents in the office of his non-profit organization in Washington, as well as at his home in Wilmington, Delaware.