Biden says he never meant to keep classified documents. Hur stands by report on president’s memory

WASHINGTON (AP) — Over five hours of interviews, President Joe Biden repeatedly told a special counsel that he never meant to retain classified information after he left the vice presidency, but he was at times fuzzy about dates and said he was unfamiliar with the paper trail for some of the sensitive documents he handled.

A transcript of the Biden interviews was made public Tuesday, just as the special counsel, Robert Hur, went before the House Judiciary Committee to face questions about his investigation of the Democratic president.

Hur, in his report, concluded that Biden should not face criminal charges over his mishandling of documents but also impugned the president’s age and competence. The special counsel stood by his assessment of the president’s memory as “accurate and fair,” in prepared testimony to be delivered to Congress.

In prepared remarks, Hur said: “What I wrote is what I believe the evidence shows, and what I expect jurors would perceive and believe. I did not sanitize my explanation. Nor did I disparage the President unfairly.”

While Biden fumbled some details in his interview, the full transcript could raise questions about Hur’s depiction of the 81-yearold president as having “significant limitations” on his memory. It paints a more textured picture of his discussions with prosecutors, filling out some of the gaps left by Hur’s accounting of the exchanges.

At the same time, it makes plain that the Republican lawyer never asked Biden about the timing of his son’s death, contradicting the president’s indignant public objections to that supposed line of questioning.

Both the hearing and the transcript were meant to clear up lingering questions about Hur’s report on the discovery of some classified records at Biden’s home and former Washington private office. But there was no guarantee they would alter preconceived notions about the president or the Trump appointee who investigated him, particularly in a hardfought election year.

On Capitol Hill, Hur was set to be the rare witness likely to be vilified all around — by Republicans angry over his decision not to charge the president, and by Democrats for his unflattering commentary about Biden.

Democrats will try to paint Hur as a political partisan out to help his party win a presidential election. Republicans immediately began digging further into Hur’s assessment of the president’s age and memory — a major attack line as they seek to unseat Biden come November.

Chairman Jim Jordan said at the start of the hearing that “it boils down to a few key facts. Joe Biden kept classified information. Joe Biden failed to properly secure classified information and Joe Biden shared classified information with people he wasn’t supposed to. Joe Biden broke the law because he’s a forgetful old man who would appear sympathetic to a jury. Mr. Hur chose not to bring charges.”

Hur’s report cited evidence that Biden willfully held on to highly classified information and shared it with a ghostwriter, based on audio of the conversations between the two men in which Biden said he had just come across some classified documents at his home.

In the interviews, Biden said he did not recall the exchange, or that he had actually discovered any documents. He said if he had discussed anything questionable with the ghostwriter, it was in referring to a 20-page sensitive memo he had written to then-President Barack Obama in 2009 arguing against surging troops in Afghanistan that he wanted to ensure didn’t make it into publication.

Hur devoted much of his report to explaining why he did not believe the evidence against Biden met the standard for criminal charges, partly based on the hours of interviews with the president.

In his prepared remarks, Hur said he was aware of the need to explain in great detail why he’d decided not to charge the president. Such explanations are common but usually kept confidential; and so he didn’t hold back, particularly in this case.

“The need to show my work was especially strong here,” he said. “The attorney general had appointed me to investigate the actions of the attorney general’s boss, the sitting president of the United States. I knew that for my decision to be credible, I could not simply announce that I recommended no criminal charges and leave it at that. I needed to explain why.”

Hur cautioned that he would not discuss investigative steps or veer from the contents of the report. He said “the evidence and the President himself put his memory squarely at issue.”

In the report, Hur said that it could be difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Biden intended to keep the documents, which is the standard for conviction in a criminal case. In part, he argued, jurors could be swayed that Biden’s age made him seem forgetful, and there was the possibility for “innocent explanations” for the mishandling of any records.

“Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, wellmeaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” Hur wrote in his report.

In his interviews, Biden repeatedly told prosecutors that he did not know how classified documents ended up at his home and former Penn Biden Center office in Washington.

“I have no idea,” he said.

He also insisted that had he known they were there, he would have returned them to the government.

The president did acknowledge that he intentionally kept his personal diaries — which officials said contained classified information. Biden insisted were his own property, a claim also asserted by previous presidents and vice presidents, and that he had a right to keep them.

He also acknowledged that he was “never that organized,” as prosecutors pressed him on why some of the documents were located in different places.

Hur, in his report, detailed how his findings about Biden were far different from those of special counsel Jack Smith about Republican front-runner Donald Trump, who has been charged with willfully retaining classified documents.

Trump was hyping Tuesday’s “Big day in Congress for the Biden Documents Hoax,” while mischaracterizing his conduct. “The DOJ gave Biden, and virtually every other person and President, a free pass,” he said. “Me, I’m still fighting!!!”

FBI agents searched Trump’s Florida estate in 2022 and removed boxes of documents marked as classified after he refused multiple requests from the National Archives to return them.