“Our investigation revealed evidence that, while a private citizen, President Biden intentionally withheld and disclosed classified material after his Vice Presidency,” special counsel Robert Hur wrote in a statement released Thursday.
Hurr makes a highly critical assessment of Biden's handling of sensitive government materials, but also lays out reasons why he should not be indicted, including recognizing that as vice president and while he was still president he “had the authority to declassify documents. His house” and that he may have forgotten about them, a jury reasonably found. can be detected.
President Biden, in a statement, expressed satisfaction with the findings of the special investigator's report: “I have cooperated fully, created no obstruction, and sought no delay.”
“During my career in public service, I have always worked to protect the security of the United States. I take these issues seriously and no one questions that,” Biden says, stressing that the case has been closed.
A Year Investigating Secret Documents in Biden's Hands
Hurr has spent a year investigating Biden's improper storage of classified documents from his time as senator and vice president, which were found at his Delaware home and in a private office where he worked in the Obama administration. as president.
The National Archives notified the FBI, which began an investigation. Biden made his homes available to agents for thorough searches, which is why highly sensitive documents came to the attention of the Justice Department.
Harin's statement said Biden could not have been prosecuted as a sitting president, but he would not yet recommend charges against him once he leaves the White House.
Contrast with Trump's classified documents
The documents are classified as classified as Top Secret/Sensitive Extracted Information, and a box in Biden's garage in Delaware “contains other items of great importance to him and which he appears to have had personal use and access to.”
Photographs included in the report showed some classified documents from Afghanistan in a worn cardboard box kept in his garage in a loose collection with other household items including a ladder and a wicker basket.
According to the report, classified documents from the Obama administration were also found in Biden's basement. Declassified documents from his time in the Senate in the 1970s and 1980s were also found in his garage.
Biden's case differed from Trump's not only in the number of documents discovered, but also in the manner in which the former president acted, trying to hide pages of classified documents from the National Archives and later the FBI. Documents.