Biden described as ‘elderly man with poor memory’ in classified documents report – as it happened

Special counselRobert Hur wrote that he was concerned jurors would not believe that Joe Biden“willfully” kept classified documents, and that was one of the reasons why he does not think the president should face charges.

“We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” Hur writes.

“Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him – by then a former president well into his eighties – of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”

Hur wrote that: “Mr. Biden’s memory was significantly limited, both during his recorded interviews with the ghostwriter in 2017, and in his interview with our office in 2023. And his cooperation with our investigation, including by reporting to the government that the Afghanistan documents were in his Delaware garage, will likely convince some jurors that he made an innocent mistake, rather than acting willfully – that is, with intent to break the law – as the statute requires.”

Hello again, live blog readers, it’s been a very lively day in US political news. We’re closing this blog now but you can keep up with all our articles on the rest of the website, about today’s Supreme Court hearing, a legislative vote in the Senate and the report into Joe Biden holding onto classified documents after his vice-presidency – and tonight’s Republican caucuses in Nevada and an airing of Tucker Carlson interviewing Vladimir Putin. The live blog will be back on Friday morning.

Here’s where things stand:

• Richard Sauber, special counsel to Joe Biden, has released a statement that the office is “pleased” the special counsel found “no criminal charges are warranted in this matter” relating to the retention and disclosure of classified material post-vice presidency. He also suggested that the Biden administration will be taking “substantive action” to prevent such mistakes in the future.

• DonaldTrump claims Biden’s documents case is worse than his own classified document case, in which he has been criminally charged, after allegedly keeping and hiding top secret papers post-White House. Trump accused the US of having a “two-tiered system of justice” and said Biden’s case was “100 times different and more severe than mine”.

• Attorneys for Joe Biden objected to special counsel Robert Hur repeatedly mentioning the president’s memory problems in his report, saying his descriptions were neither accurate nor appropriate.

• JoeBiden says he ‘cooperated completely’ with the classified document investigation, even engaging in a lengthy interview with the special council not long after Hamas had attacked southern Israel and created an international crisis.

• Special CounselRobert Hur’s report says Biden“willfully” kept and disclosed classified documents but a jury would be unlikely to convict beyond reasonable doubt, thinking it more likely to have been an innocent mistake by a well-meaning forgetful old man.

• The classified documents reportsaid no criminal charges were warranted against Joe Biden, who can’t be charged as a sitting president, and would not be justified even if he wasn’t president.

• The US Senatevoted to advance legislation that will send assistance to the militaries of Israel and Ukraine, as well as provide aid to Taiwan, but without new US immigration measures aimed chiefly at dealing with migration at the US-Mexico border. The legislation cleared the 60-vote threshold necessary to get around a filibuster, with 67 votes in favor, and 32 opposed. Democrats are aiming for a full vote next week.

• The US Supreme Courtappeared broadly skeptical of Colorado’s effort to keep Donald Trump off this year’s presidential ballot, with chief justice John Robertsworrying that if followed, other states would retaliate against future Democratic or Republican candidates, potentially swaying elections.

• The supreme court gatheredto hear arguments in a case that could decide if Donald Trumpis eligible to continue his run for reelection as president. A legal effort to keep him off ballots nationwide began last year, when advocacy groups filed lawsuits in various states, arguing the constitution bars Trump from serving because he engaged in an insurrection on January 6, 2021.

More from the statement of Bob Bauer, the personal counsel to president Biden, on the Hur report:

Very little in this opus adds to a clear, succinctly stated understanding of a straightforward conclusion: no misconduct occurred, no charges are warranted. The Report delves into a discussion of the “evidence” of “willful” retention of classified documents, only to acknowledge that there is, in fact, no case of “willful” retention at all. Pages are devoted to documents related to Afghanistan policy that the Special Counsel concedes have little or no national security sensitivity. After extensive discussion of the President’s use of his diaries in writing his book, Promise Me, Dad, the Special Counsel Report concludes that the President shared with an assistant two passages from his diaries deemed to contain classified material, while also conceding that the President communicated a concern with protecting classified information throughout the book-writing process – and that the passages in question never made it into the book.

He cited a statement from the Department of Justice inspector general, who noted that although high-profile investigations – like those of a president – may be subject to more intense scrutiny, in this case the investigation violated “well-established department norms” – including “trashing the subject of an investigation with extraneous, unfounded, and irrelevant critical commentary”. More from his statement:

Throughout this process, a guiding principle has been to protect the integrity and independence of this investigation. Based on the facts and the law, the Special Counsel in this case had no choice but to find that criminal charges were not warranted. He had other choices, which should have been guided by the Department’s rules, policies, and practices, and he made the wrong ones.

Bob Bauer,attorney and personal counsel to President Biden, released an extensive statement in response to the Hur report on Thursday.

Like other allies of the president in the aftermath of the report, he highlighted Biden’s “complete cooperation”, including his “unprecedented decision” to open up every room of his family home and beach house to “comprehensive FBI searches as well as a voluntary interview conducted over two days”.

“We welcome this conclusion to the inquiry. But to be clear, it was plain from the outset that criminal charges were not warranted,” he said.

The report came after a 15-month inquiry involving 173 interviews of 147 witnesses and more than 7 million documents, Bauer said. Regarding the documents in question, the president had “immediately directed his team to report the discovery of classified documents mistakenly packed and shipped at the end of the Transition and facilitate their immediate return to the government”.

Bauer also condemned the investigation’s targeting of Biden’s personal notes and diaries, which he stated are commonly kept by those in office “all the way back to the Founding Fathers”. Investigating them, he said “flouts Department regulations and norms”.

“The Department of Justice has been aware of this note-taking practice for decades,” he said. “Until now, the Department never chose to investigate the practice, much less the contents of a president’s personal notes and diaries, even when DOJ expressly acknowledged that they might contain classified material.”

Richard Sauber, special counsel to president Biden, has released a statement that the office is “pleased” the special counsel found “no criminal charges are warranted in this matter”. He also suggested that the Biden administrationwill be taking “substantive action” to prevent such mistakes in the future.

He noted that the report acknowledged “mistakes when packing documents at the end of an Administration or when Members of Congress leave office are unfortunately a common occurrence”.

“It’s happened with every Administration, Republican and Democrat, for the past 50 years,” he said. “Now that this investigation has concluded, President Biden plans to take new, substantive action to help prevent such mistakes in the future and will announce it soon.”

Sauber noted that the report recognized Biden “fully cooperated from day one”, self-reporting the classified documents found and ensuring the documents were “immediately returned to the government”.

“The simple truth is President Biden takes classified information seriously and strives to protect it,” Sauber said. “He has spent decades at the highest levels of government defending and advancing America’s national security and foreign policy interests and protecting her secrets.”

House Republican leadership issues statement on special counsel report

Top Republicans of the House of representatives – speaker Mike Johnson, leader Steve Scalise, whip Tom Emmer, and chairwoman Elise Stefanik – have released a statement on the Hur report, which they called “deeply disturbing”.

Of particular concern, they said, were findings regarding the “significant limitations” the President’s memory, which the special counsel cited as reasoning to not recommend charges. Here is the leadership’s full statement:

The Special Counsel’s finding that President Biden ‘willfully retained and disclosed classified materials’ and engaged in practices that ‘present serious risks to national security’ is deeply disturbing.

Not only does it demonstrate the President’s recklessness, but exposes a two-tiered system of justice that is indicting one President with politically motivated charges while carrying water for another amid similar allegations.

Among the most disturbing parts of this report is the Special Counsel’s justification for not recommending charges: namely that the President’s memory had such ‘significant limitations’ that he could not convince a jury that the President held a ‘mental state of willfulness’ that a serious felony requires.

A man too incapable of being held accountable for mishandling classified information is certainly unfit for the Oval Office.

New York Democrat and House judiciary committee ranking member Jerrold Nadler has issued a statement in response to Hur’s report, highlighting Trump’s own charges over mishandling of documents.

He said that it was likely “MAGA Republicans” will not let this go, and call to “investigate the investigators” – but the report “effectively ends the discussion”, he said. The rest of his statement below:

President Biden cooperated fully with the Special Counsel and redacted no portion of the Special Counsel’s report. Unlike Trump, President Biden has nothing to hide. And the contrast here is striking. If Trump had cooperated with the Department of Justice – instead of lying to investigators, again and again – he might have avoided at least some of the 91 criminal charges currently pending against him.

In addition to the statement from Donald Trump himself, Make America Great Again Inc – a Super Pac supporting the former president’s campaign for election in 2024, has released its own comment on Hur’s report.

“If you’re too senile to stand trial, then you’re too senile to be president,” said Alex Pfeiffer, communications director for Make America Great Again Inc. “Joe Biden is unfit to lead this nation.”

Former president Donald Trump has released a statement via his campaign regarding the findings in the report from Robert Hur, saying “THIS HAS NOW PROVEN TO BE A TWO-TIERED SYSTEM OF JUSTICE AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL SELECTIVE PROSECUTION!” [sic].

Trump referenced his own classified documents case, in which he is charged of willful retention of national defense information, false statements and representations, conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding a document or record, corruptly concealing a document, concealing a document in a federal investigation and a scheme to conceal. That case is expected to go to trial in May 2024.

The Biden Documents Case is 100 times different and more severe than mine. I did nothing wrong, and I cooperated far more. What Biden did is outrageously criminal - He had 50 years of documents, 50 times more than I had, and “WILLFULLY RETAINED” them. I was covered by the Presidential Records Act, Secret Service was always around, and GSA delivered the documents. Deranged Jack Smith should drop this Case immediately. ELECTION INTERFERENCE.

Republican chairman James Comer of the House committee on oversight and accountability has issued the following statement on the report from special counsel Robert Hur:

Americans expect equal justice under the law and are dismayed the Justice Department continues to allow Joe Biden to live above it. Joe Biden willfully retained classified documents for years in unsecure locations and intentionally disclosed them yet faces no consequences for his actions. The House Oversight Committee has been investigating Joe Biden’s mishandling of classified documents and we have uncovered key facts that unravel the White House’s and President Biden’s personal attorney’s narrative of events. Additionally, important questions remain about the extent of Joe Biden retaining sensitive materials related to specific countries involving his family’s influence peddling schemes that brought in millions for the Bidens. While the Justice Department has closed its investigation, the Oversight Committee’s investigation continues. We will continue to provide the transparency and accountability owed to the American people.

In addition to the statement, Comer said the White House was not cooperating with interviews the committee has requested with current and former White House staff who were involved with organizing, moving and removing boxes that contained classified materials.

He stated that the report confirmed Biden retained documents related to China and Ukraine, “two countries the Bidens have solicited and received millions of dollars from”.

You can read special counsel Robert Hur’s report into Joe Biden’s possession of classified documents, as well as the rebuttal from the president’s attorneys, below:

Attorneys for Joe Biden objected to special counsel Robert Hur repeatedly mentioning the president’s memory problems in his report.

Referring to his conversation with Mark Zwonitzer, ghostwriter of his 2017 memoir Promise Me, Dad, Hur writes: “Mr. Biden’s recorded conversations with Zwonitzer from 2017 are often painfully slow, with Mr. Biden struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries.”

He later goes on to describe Biden as showing “diminished faculties and faulty memory” in his conversations with Zwonitzer.

In a letter written to Hur dated earlier this week and included in the report, the president’s special counsel Richard Sauberand personal attorney Bob Bauertook issue with the special counsel’s language:

We do not believe that the report’s treatment of President Biden’s memory is accurate or appropriate. The report uses highly prejudicial language to describe a commonplace occurrence among witnesses: a lack of recall of years-old events. Such comments have no place in a Department of Justice report, particularly one that in the first paragraph announces that no criminal charges are ‘warranted’ and that ‘the evidence does not establish Mr. Biden’s guilt.’

They continue:

Not only do you treat the President differently from other witnesses when discussing his limited recall of certain years-ago events, but you also do so on occasions in prejudicial and inflammatory terms. You refer to President Biden’s memory on at least nine occasions – a number that is itself gratuitous.

Sauber and Bauer requested Hur “revisit your descriptions of President Biden’s memory”. He apparently did not do so.

Special counsel Robert Hur included in his report photos of where Joe Biden’s classified documents were stored:

In a just-released statement, Joe Bidensaid he “threw up no roadblocks” to Robert Hur’s investigation of his possession of classified documents, and notes he spoke to the special counsel even in the aftermath of Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel.

The president’s comments came after Hur’s report noted that it would be difficult to convince jurors the “elderly” Biden intentionally kept government secrets, and related his inability to remember important dates during interviews with the special counsel.

Here’s what Biden had to say, in full:

The Special Counsel released today its findings about its look into my handling of classified documents. I was pleased to see they reached the conclusion I believed all along they would reach – that there would be no charges brought in this case and the matter is now closed.

This was an exhaustive investigation going back more than 40 years, even into the 1970s when I was a young Senator. I cooperated completely, threw up no roadblocks, and sought no delays. In fact, I was so determined to give the Special Counsel what they needed that I went forward with five hours of in-person interviews over two days on October 8th and 9th of last year, even though Israel had just been attacked on October 7th and I was in the middle of handling an international crisis. I just believed that’s what I owed the American people so they could know no charges would be brought and the matter closed.

Over my career in public service, I have always worked to protect America’s security. I take these issues seriously and no one has ever questioned that.

Special counsel Robert Hur wrote that in an interview last year, Joe Biden struggled to recall key chapters in his personal and professional life:

In his interview with our office, Mr. Biden’s memory was worse. He did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended (“if it was 2013 - when did I stop being Vice President?”), and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began (“in 2009, am I still Vice President?”). He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died. And his memory appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him. Among other things, he mistakenly said he “had a real difference” of opinion with General Karl Eikenberry, when, in fact, Eikenberry was an ally whom Mr. Eiden cited approvingly in his Thanksgiving memo to President Obama.

Biden’s lack of ability to remember things would make it hard to prosecute him, Hur said:

We also expect many jurors to be struck by the place where the Afghanistan documents were ultimately found in Mr. Biden’s Delaware home: in a badly damaged box in the garage, near a collapsed dog crate, a dog bed, a Zappos box, an empty bucket, a broken lamp wrapped with duct tape, potting soil, and synthetic firewood.

A reasonable juror could conclude that this is not where a person intentionally stores what he supposedly considers to be important classified documents, critical to his legacy. Rather, it looks more like a place a person stores classified documents he has forgotten about or is unaware of. We have considered – and investigated – the possibility that the box was intentionally placed in the garage to make it appear to be there by mistake, but the evidence does not support that conclusion.