Biden defended himself against the special counsel report
Hur’s Report on the Mueller Investigation of the Papers Arising in the Biden Era as Vice-President of the United States
Unlike in Biden’s case, where the president consented to searches of his property and willingly spoke with investigators, Trump is accused of actively trying to obstruct officials from recovering classified material.
Trump is facing more than three dozen federal criminal charges after boxes of classified material were uncovered in unsecure locations at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Fla. Trump and his associates have pleaded not guilty to federal charges.
The political consequences of Hur’s investigation are beginning. Biden will have to contend with renewed attention on his age and convince voters that he should serve another term as president.
Hur’s report zeroes in on two buckets of classified materials in particular: documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, and notebooks with Biden’s handwritten notes about national security and foreign policy issues.
“Mr. Biden’s decision to read notes nearly verbatim to [ghostwriter Mark] Zwonitzer that Mr. Biden had just identified as potentially classified cannot be justified. There isn’t evidence to show that he wanted to share classified information. Mr. Biden didn’t know if the notebook passage he read was classified. That is enough to create reasonable doubt about whether Mr. Biden acted willfully.”
The report says the material was proof of the stand Mr. Biden took in regard to some of his most important decisions as vice president.
The bulk of the report focuses on two types of classified materials — documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan; and notebooks that Biden used throughout his presidency for a combination of personal reflections, meeting notes and other writings.
A Justice Department special counsel has recommended no criminal charges be brought against President Biden in connection with the classified documents that were found at his Delaware home and a think-tank office in Washington, D.C.
“We conclude that no criminal charges are warranted in this matter,” the report says. “We would reach the same conclusion even if Department of Justice policy did not foreclose criminal charges against a sitting president.”
The White House said “we disagree with a number of inaccurate and inappropriate comments in the Special Counsel’s report” on the classified documents, but did not detail what those were.
Biden cooperated with the investigation and said “mistakes when packing documents are unfortunately a common occurrence”, according to a report by a White House lawyer.
He angrily responded to special counsel Robert Hur’s description of a portion of an interview in which Hur said Biden seemed to not remember when his son, Beau, died.
Asked by a reporter about the description of being “a well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory,” Biden said: “I’m well meaning and I’m an elderly man and I know what I’m doing.”
But when he answered a question about current hostage negotiations with Israel and Hamas, Biden mistakenly said that President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi of Egypt was the “president of Mexico.”
Biden has mixed up names of foreign leaders in recent days, mentioning former German Chancellor “Helmut Kohl” and the French President “Mitterrand”. François Mitterrand and Kohl were former leaders of France and Germany, respectively.
The Biden classified documents report and the fallout: What you need to know about the president’s senior adviser and his client, Mark Biden, after the attack on Israel
The report comes at a sensitive time as the president is locked in a tight race with Donald Trump, his predecessor as president who is the front-runner for the republican nomination; his job approval is low, as is his handling of the economy and immigration. The special counsel’s assertion that he is an elderly man with a poor memory isn’t going to help.
Still, Biden sought to dispute the unfavorable parts of the report in a fiery press conference Thursday night, emphasizing his cooperation with the investigation and defending his fitness for office.
What materials have been uncovered, what information has been known about how they’ve been handled, as well as the legal arguments regarding whether charges were appropriate are covered in the report.
Biden used his notebooks when writing his memoir, Promise Me, Dad, which reflected on the year his older son Beau died of cancer, two years earlier.
In conversations with his ghostwriter for the book, he read from those notebooks — and on at least three occasions shared classified material while doing so.
Hur said the evidence doesn’t establish Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and that it would be hard to prove that Biden willfully intended to break the law.
In a letter to the special counsel, Biden’s lawyers objected to the characterization of their client’s memory and multiple references to it.
The report uses highly prejudiced language to describe a commonplace occurrence among witnesses, said two of the president’s special counsel.
The lawyers also note that the 5 hours of interviewing with Biden began the day after the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, when Biden had numerous meetings with foreign leaders and his national security team.
“How in the hell dare he raise that?” Biden said, “This is not their goddamn business,” and moved to tears. I don’t need anyone to remind me of his death.
Republicans seized on the line and said that Biden should not be president because of it.
The Senate Appointment Committee Report on Trump’s Correlations with the Mar-a-Lago Documents and Other Inequality Cases
Trump, meanwhile, is awaiting trial in multiple cases, including for the Mar-a-Lago documents case. The Supreme Court was hearing arguments about whether Trump could be removed from the Colorado election ballot because of his role in the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
