Biden ‘willfully’ disclosed classified materials, but no criminal charges warranted
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden “willfully” retained and disclosed highly classified materials when he was a private citizen, including documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan and other sensitive national security matters, according to a Justice Department report that nonetheless says no criminal charges are warranted for him or anyone else.
The report from special counsel Robert Hur, released Thursday, represents a harshly critical assessment of Biden’s handling of sensitive government materials, but also details the reasons why he should not be charged with the crime.
The findings will likely blunt his ability to forcefully condemn Donald Trump, Biden’s likely opponent in November’s 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.
Hur’s report says evidence suggests that many of the classified documents recovered by investigators at the Penn Biden Center, in parts of Biden’s Delaware home, and in his Senate papers at the University of Delaware were retained by “mistake.”
Biden said in a statement that he was “pleased” the special counsel had “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.”
He made a point of saying that he sat for five hours of in-person interviews over two days on Oct. 8 and 9, “even though Israel had just been attacked on October 7th and I was in the middle of handling an international crisis.”
The report comes after a yearlong investigation into the improper retention of classified documents by Biden, from his time as a senator and as vice president, that were found at his Delaware home, as well as at a private office that he used in between his service in the Obama administration and becoming president.
