The president has been under investigation for several months after a report of classified documents was released, claiming that Biden had been keeping documents that he was not entitled to hold in his private residence. The president immediately complied with the investigation, and the report surrounding the investigation and subsequent interviews has been released.
Back to the Beginning
The special counsel assigned to the president’s case, Robert K. Hur, released a 300-page report detailing his investigation into the Biden documents case. As a refresher, this investigation has been taking place since January of 2023.
It started in November of 2022, when lawyers associated with the president discovered approximately 25-30 classified government documents in Joe Biden’s former office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington D.C., and in his personal residence in Delaware.
The Documents in Biden’s Residence
The documents that were discovered dated back to Joe Biden’s time in the Senate, as well as his vice presidency during the Obama administration. Joe Biden immediately turned the documents over to the appropriate authorities, and several months later an investigation was launched into the mishandling of the documents.
The investigation into the documents and Biden’s handling of them spanned from January of 2023 until February of this year. The final report on the investigation has finally been released by the Special Counsel who was assigned to the case.
The Hur Report
The report released by Hur drew summaries of hours of interviews with Biden and those surrounding him, as well as analysis of the documents that were left and where they were kept. All the information is, of course, redacted appropriately, but the conclusions are more than clear.
Firstly, Hur concluded that over the course of the investigation, the evidence was not strong enough to support a potential criminal charge of the current president regarding his mishandling of the documents. This was the best piece of news from the special counsel report, as far as the President should be concerned.
Biden is “Sympathetic and Well Meaning”
However, Hur went on to explain that another reason for choosing not to charge Biden has to do with his mental faculties. He explains that Biden is a “sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.” He then goes on to state that it would be difficult to convince a jury that Biden had meant to do anything malicious with the documents, making criminal charges a hard sell.
Hur also made statements regarding Biden’s age and his possible “willfulness” that a jury would need to be convinced of for a felony charge. He concluded that it wasn’t likely that he would be able to get a conviction based on the evidence presented, and that the President would be well into his eighties by the time the investigation concluded, making him a sympathetic client.
Specific Wording in the Document
Conservative media outlets immediately latched onto specific wording in the report, that Biden willfully retained pertinent information regarding the documents. The documents also stated that Biden disclosed classified materials from his presidency after his term as vice president was over, when he was a private citizen with no authorization to do so.
Conservative networks, and Fox News in particular, immediately ran with the story. The news that Biden “lied” in the report started making headlines right away, and Biden was quick to respond to the allegations made in the report.
Biden Speaks For Himself
In a press conference addressing the report, Biden firmly denied the allegations against his mental state. He claimed that his memory is “just fine,” and pointed out that he sat through more than five hours of interviews for Special Counsel Hur regarding this investigation.
Biden then went on to defend his re-election campaign, stating that he is “the most qualified person in the country to be running for president.” It’s clear that he did this to fend off the rumors about his mental state, which many have been using as a reason for him to step away from campaigning for another four years as president.
A Shining Portion of the Report
Before taking questions from the reporters in the audience, Biden praised one portion of the special counsel’s report. In the report, Hur specifies the difference between the Biden document case and the Trump document case that is currently facing charges in Florida.
Biden praised Hur for drawing a clear distinction between the two cases, not only in scope but in active participation. He reiterated that he sat for the interviews with the special counsel and fully cooperated with all aspects of the investigation, unlike his predecessor who is facing felony charges for his mishandling of classified documents.
In Contrast to Trump
The special counsel’s report comes in the wake of ongoing revelations regarding Donald Trump’s own documents case. The former president’s case in Florida has been undergoing delays due to appeals that have been working their way through the court system.
Trump’s own document case is much more dire than the one that President Biden was facing, given the severity of the breach that was discovered during the investigation into Mar-A-Lago. It remains to be seen whether Trump will ultimately be found guilty for his complicity in the documents case, but for Biden, the answer is now clear.
A Positive Conclusion for Biden
While there are many prominent figures, particularly Conservatives who are focusing on the specific language that Hur used in his report, the fact of the matter is that Biden has been released of any liability regarding this case.
The president will not be facing charges for his role in mishandling these classified documents, and made clear in his comments that he was grateful to Special Counsel Hur for doing his job, and doing it thoroughly. All in all, despite many who want to point to his “mental competence,” Biden got off relatively easy in this entire situation.
