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| Reuters |
Special Prosecutor Robert Hur concluded that U.S. President Joe Biden intentionally retained classified documents from his time as vice president but decided not to bring charges against the president.
"Our investigation found evidence that President Biden intentionally retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen," Hur said in a report published on Thursday.
However, the prosecutor concluded that there is not sufficient justification to bring charges against the president.
Prosecuting Biden, Hur noted, would be "unwarranted under our consideration of aggravating and mitigating factors" and explained that the evidence "does not establish guilt" on the part of the president.
Hur's team said that prosecuting Biden would be "unwarranted under our consideration of aggravating and mitigating factors" outlined in the Department of Justice's prosecution policies.
Biden has been under investigation since a year ago when classified documents from his time as vice president under Barack Obama were found in his Delaware home and a private office.
In the document, the prosecutor explains that Biden exhibited "significantly limited memory" during interrogations in 2023.
He even recounts that the president could not recall the dates when he held the vice presidency and had difficulty remembering the date of his son Beau's death in 2015.
In response to the report's publication, Biden issued a statement expressing satisfaction at not being charged but made no mention of the prosecutor's references to his memory.
"I am glad to see they have reached the conclusion that I have always believed they would— that charges would not be filed in this case, and it is now closed," the president said in the statement.
Biden also defended that he "fully cooperated with prosecutors, did not obstruct, and did not seek delays" in the investigation.
The documents were found by Biden's lawyers in November and December 2022 and immediately handed over to the National Archives, the agency tasked with safeguarding them. Following this, the Department of Justice opened an investigation.
Former President Donald Trump, a Republican candidate in the upcoming November elections, was also investigated for retaining official documents in his Florida mansion and was charged with 40 counts as he refused to hand them over for months.
According to publicly available information, both investigations are very different; the number of documents in question in Biden's investigation is around 20, while Trump allegedly illegally retained 300 documents, which had to be recovered through an FBI raid.