The Justice Department on Thursday released its long-awaited investigation into President Joe Biden’s mishandling of classified documents, drawing a damning conclusion that he was an “older man with a poor memory.”
While the report does not recommend filing charges against the 81-year-old president, it delivers a flurry of damaging findings about sensitive files found in Biden’s garage and personal office.
In interviews with investigators, he became confused about the dates he served as vice president and could not even remember the year his beloved son Beau died.
It says his practice of reading sensitive files to a ghostwriter, for example, posed a significant national security risk.
One of the reasons they decided not to press charges was because “Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury at trial, as he did during our interview with him, as a likable, well-meaning, older 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 photos show boxes and boxes of files stored in unsafe locations, such as the garage of his home.
The report said there was some evidence to suggest that Biden was well aware that he should not keep classified handwritten notes after leaving office, and pointed out that his long career in Washington meant he was familiar “with the measures taken to protect classified information and the measures are needed to prevent damage to national security.’
Yet notebooks full of classified information were kept in unlocked drawers at his home.
And it wasn’t just that the notebooks were lost and forgotten.
“He consulted the notebooks liberally during hours of conversations with his ghostwriter and considered them deeply personal and valuable possessions that he was unwilling to part with,” Special Prosecutor Robert Hur wrote.
Biden came into the spotlight after his predecessor Donald Trump was accused of illegally keeping classified documents in his Mar-a-Lago home.
And Hur’s report will likely undermine the Biden campaign’s efforts 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 inability to remember important dates in his career and personal life when interviewed by investigators.
‘He couldn’t remember when he was vice president, forgot on the first day of the interview when his term ended (“if it was 2013 – when did I stop being vice president?”), and forgot on the second day of the interview as his term began (“Am I still vice president in 2009?”), he reportedly said.
“He didn’t even remember his son Beau dying within a few years.”