Biden defends how he dealt with classified documents
The Special Counsel’s Report on the Investigation of President Biden’s Transgressions with Classified Documents in his Delaware Home and Washington, D.C.
There will be no charges related to the investigation into President Biden’s handling of classified material. Robert Hur found that the evidence investigators uncovered fell short of proving that Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials.
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 in the federal case, which is being prosecuted by special counsel Jack Smith.
Hur’s investigation is closed, but the political fallout has begun. Biden will have to contend with renewed attention on his age and convince voters that he should serve another term as president.
As he did during his interview with the office, Biden would present himself as a sympathetic elderly man with a poor memory, according to the report.
“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 is no evidence that proves he intended to share classified information. Mr. Biden said he wasn’t sure if the notebook passage he read was classified. That makes reasonable doubt about the actions of Mr. Biden.
The report says that these material was proof of the stand Mr. Biden had taken in regards to the most important decisions of his vice presidency.
The documents about Afghanistan are from the fall of 2009, the report says, and were found in a box in Biden’s Delaware garage. The Thanksgiving memo that Biden sent to Obama to persuade him to stop sending more troops to Afghanistan had materials marked classified.
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 it did not agree with some of the comments in the Special Counsel’s report, but did not say what those were.
White House lawyer Richard Sauber said the report shows that Biden cooperated with the investigation and said “mistakes when packing documents … are unfortunately a common occurrence.”
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 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 frequently mixed up names of foreign leaders, for instance, calling France’s President “Mitterrand” and Germany’s Chancellor “Helmut Kohl”. François Mitterrand and Kohl were former leaders of France and Germany, respectively.
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Movies: Agent of Happiness is a documentary about Bhutan’s approach to measuring its own “gross national happiness.” The film follows one not-especially-happy agent who gathers the data.
More than half of the buildings in the Gaza Strip have been destroyed or damaged in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks on Israel. Some researchers and human rights advocates say the destruction amounts to “domicide,” or systematic destruction of homes.
Former President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil attempted to overturn the country’s 2022 presidential election, according to accusations by the Brazilian federal police. His passport was seized by the police, he had close associates arrested, and dozens of properties were raided. An investigation also detailed what they say was a vast conspiracy by the right-wing leader and his aides to plot a coup. At one point, the report said Bolsonaro personally edited a proposed order to arrest a Supreme Court justice.
The Supreme Court seemed to doubt the idea that Colorado could exclude former President Donald Trump from the primary ballot. Allowing a state to determine who is eligible for national office could have national consequences. Justice Elena Kagan also expressed her doubts.
Source: Biden cleared in classified documents case, Supreme Court hears Trump’s Colorado ban
What you need to know about the Biden classified documents report and the fallout: a sensitive report for the president, who also is running for the presidency
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A report that comes at a sensitive time for the president, he is locked in a tight race for the Republican nomination with Trump and his job approval is low as well as his handling of the economy and immigration. The special counsel’s assertion that he’s an “elderly man with a poor memory” is hardly going to help.
In his fiery press conference Thursday night, Biden sought to dispute the bad parts of the report, emphasizing his cooperation with the investigation and his fitness for office.
The report covers what materials have been uncovered, what’s known about how they were handled — going back to Biden’s time as vice president — as well as the legal arguments around whether charges were appropriate.
Biden relied on his notebooks in particular while writing his memoir Promise Me, Dad, which was published in 2017 and reflects on the year his older son Beau died of cancer, two years earlier.
He shared information from his notebooks with his ghostwriter in conversations for the book, but he also read from them.
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.
The letter Biden’s lawyers wrote to the special counsel was attached to the public report, which contained several references to Biden’s memory.
The report used highly disproportionate language to describe a commonplace occurrence among witnesses, according to Bob Bauer, Biden’s personal counsel.
The lawyers note that Biden had meetings with foreign leaders and his national security team after the attack on Israel.
How do you think he would raise that? Biden said, adding it was “none of their damn business,” and choking up with emotion. “I don’t need anyone to remind me when he passed away.”
Donald Trump and other Republicans immediately seized on the fact that Biden should no longer be president, because they would face off against him in the general election.
Source: What you need to know about the Biden classified documents report and the fallout
Trump’s case for the Mar-a-Lago documents and the Aug. 6 U.S. Capitol attack: a critical test of the presidential campaign
The Mar-a-Lago documents case is one of the many cases Trump is awaiting trial in. And hours before the Hur report dropped on Thursday, the Supreme Court was hearing arguments about whether Trump could be disqualified from the ballot in Colorado for his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
