08 February 2024 , 20:24
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President Joe Biden has been accused of retaining and disclosing highly classified materials when he was a private citizen, according to a Justice Department report.
The report from special counsel Robert Hur criticises Biden's handling of sensitive government materials but also explains why he should not be charged with a crime.
This could impact his ability to condemn Donald Trump, his likely opponent in the upcoming presidential election, over a criminal indictment charging the former president with illegally hoarding classified records at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
“Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen,” Hur wrote.
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Attorney Robert Hur says Biden's actions won't result in legal action (Getty Images)However, the report states that no criminal charges are warranted for him or anyone else.
Unlike Trump, who knowingly hid documents and lied about having them, resulting in criminal charges, when Biden's lawyers found the classified documents, they immediately got in touch with the National Archives to send them back to the government.
The National Archives informed the FBI and the later began an investigation. Biden allowed agents to search his homes, which is how the Justice Department found the most important documents.
The report by Hur states that Biden couldn't have been prosecuted because he is currently president, but the report also says that they wouldn't recommend charges against him anyway.
"We would reach the same conclusion even if Department of Justice policy did not foreclose criminal charges against a sitting president," the report mentioned.
Biden is immune from charges, according to Special Council Robert Hur (Derek French/SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock)The report focuses on Biden's handling of classified Afghanistan documents, including a decision to send more troops there by the Obama administration. These were kept at his home in Delaware after he finished his term as vice president.
The report said: "These materials were proof of the stand Mr. Biden took in what he regarded as among the most important decisions of his vice presidency."
The classified documents, some marked as Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information Level, were found in a box in Biden's garage. This box also contained other items that were very important to him.
Pictures in the report show some of these classified documents stored in a worn-out cardboard box in his garage, along with other household items like a ladder and a wicker basket.
The report also revealed that classified documents from the Obama administration were found in Biden's basement den. Documents from his time in the Senate during the 1970s and 1980s were also discovered in his garage.
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Even though holding the Afghanistan documents as a private person could be the strongest reason for charges, the prosecutors mentioned it's possible that Biden found those papers in 2017 in Virginia and then quickly forgot about them.
The report suggests that "This could convince some reasonable jurors that he did not retain them willfully," It also mentions that Biden was aware he couldn't keep classified notes at home after leaving office, but still kept notebooks with classified information in unlocked drawers at his house.
"He had strong motivations to do so and to ignore the rules for properly handing the classified information in his notebooks," the report added. "He consulted the notebooks liberally during hours of discussions with his ghostwriter and viewed them as highly private and valued possessions with which he was unwilling to part."
Although the report doesn't pose a legal threat to the president, it's still an embarrassment for Biden, who emphasised competency and experience during his campaign.
"Mr. Biden was known to remove and keep classified material from his briefing books for future use, and his staff struggled - and sometimes failed - to retrieve those materials," the report reveals. "And there was no procedure at all for tracking some of the classified material Mr. Biden received outside of his briefing books"