OAN’s Sophia Flores
1:00 PM –Thursday, February 8, 2024
Special counsel Robert Hur has released his report which concluded that while President Joe Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified military and national security information, he will not face criminal charges.
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Hur’s 345-page report on Biden’s mishandling of Obama-era classified documents during his time as vice president were delivered to Congress on Thursday.
“We conclude that the evidence does not establish Mr. Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt,” the report says. “Prosecution of Mr. Biden is also unwarranted based on our consideration of the aggravating and mitigating factors.”
Biden’s conduct “present[ed] serious risks to national security, given the vulnerability of extraordinarily sensitive information to loss or compromise to America’s adversaries…But addressing those risks when pursuing criminal charges, the only means available to this office, is not the proper remedy here,” the report continued.
According to the report, “FBI agents recovered these materials from the garage, offices, and basement den in Mr. Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home.”
Additionally, Biden kept unauthorized notebooks in unlocked drawers and in unsecure places in both his Virginia and Delaware homes.
Biden often used notebooks during his time as vice president, especially during the President’s Daily briefing and during National Security Council meetings.
The materials in these notebooks “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 source and methods.”
During his investigation, Hur discovered that Biden knew about the classified documents that were in his home in 2017, a time when he was a private citizen and no longer in the White House. Biden admitted that he shared some of the document’s information with a ghost writer prior to his memoir being released.
Biden’s ghostwriter will not be charged with obstruction of justice due to deleting audio recordings he had that were of “significant evidentiary value.”
“After learning of the special counsel’s appointment in this matter, Mr. Biden’s ghostwriter deleted audio recordings he had created of his discussions with Mr. Biden during the writing of Mr. Biden’s 2017 memoir,” the report said. “The recordings had significant evidentiary value.”
Hur claimed that it is difficult to prosecute Biden as he could appear as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” to jurors.
“(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,” he said.
“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, adding that Biden “is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt.”
It was also revealed that Biden’s memory is hazy. The Democrat did not remember when he was vice president and was unclear on the years he was Obama’s right hand man.
This re-evaluation comes at a time where many citizens are worried about Biden and his competency to run the country.
According to a poll from NBC, 76% of voters are concerned about Biden’s age. He is currently 81-years-old. If he were elected to a second term, he would be 86-years-old by the time he left office.
Towards the end of the report, Hur went on to state that this case differs from Trump’s mishandling of documents because he claims Biden was cooperative with investigators while the 45th president was not.
“Mr. Trump allegedly did the opposite,” Hur Wrote, “According to the indictment, he not only refused to return the documents for many months, but he also obstructed justice.”
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