Biden won’t face charges, ‘memory fine’
WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden will not face charges for knowingly taking classified documents when he left the vicepresidency in 2017, a prosecutor said yesterday, drawing a swift rebuke from him.
Special counsel Robert Hur said in a report he opted against bringing criminal charges following a 15month probe because Biden cooperated and would be difficult to convict, describing him as a ‘‘wellmeaning, elderly man with a poor memory’’.
Biden, in an angry rebuttal, said his ‘‘memory was fine’’.
During remarks at the White House he lashed out at the attorney’s suggestion that he had forgotten when his son, Beau, died and said the accusation he had willfully kept the classified material was ‘‘just plain wrong’’.
The report ensures Biden, unlike his expected presidential rival Donald Trump, will not risk prison time for mishandling sensitive government documents.
But it will cause further embarrassment for Biden, 81, as the oldest person ever to serve as United States president tries to convince voters he should serve another fouryear term.
‘‘Mr Biden would likely present himself to a jury . . . as a sympathetic, wellmeaning, elderly man with a poor memory,’’ Hur wrote.
Biden noted Hur drew a distinction between him and Trump, 77: Biden returned the documents while Trump allegedly declined to do so.
Biden, who earlier this week referred to a conversation he had with Angela Merkel in 2021 as having taken place with the late German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, pushed back against descriptions of his recall.
At one point during his remarks Biden confused the presidents of Mexico and Egypt.
Hur wrote Biden’s memory was ‘‘severely limited’’ when he was interviewed by members of his prosecution team.
Biden forgot what year his term began as vicepresident under president Barack Obama and when it ended, and what year his son Beau died.
Biden grew emotional about his son’s inclusion.
‘‘How in the hell dare he raise that. Frankly, when I was asked the question I thought to myself it wasn’t any of their damn business.’’
Biden’s lawyers said his memory lapses were not unusual for someone trying to describe events that took place years ago.
After the report’s release, Biden’s lawyers criticised Hur for overreach.
‘‘It was plain from the outset that criminal charges were not warranted,’’ his personal lawyer Bob Bauer said.
‘‘Yet the special counsel could not refrain from investigative excess.’’
Hur found Biden took a handwritten memo to thenpresident Obama in 2009 opposing a planned troop surge in Afghanistan, and handwritten notes related to intelligence briefings and national security meetings.
He told his ghostwriter in February 2017, a month after leaving the vicepresidency, he had ‘‘found all the classified stuff’’ in a home he was renting in Virginia, referring to documents on the Afghanistan war.
He read aloud classified notebook passages to his ghostwriter on at least three occasions recounting meetings in the White House Situation Room, the report found.