Biden responds to special counsel report on handling of classified documents

On any other week, special counsel Robert Hur's writing that President Joe Biden could be perceived as "a sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory" would have been a damning portrait of a sitting president.

For Biden, however, the special counsel's comments about his memory came at an even more inopportune moment. On three separate occasions this week, Biden has confused the names of European leaders who died years ago with those who more recently served in office, raising more questions about his mental recall.

In those episodes, Biden was describing an international summit in 2021. He described speaking with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who died in 2017, and French President Francois Mitterrand, who died in 1996.

Only about 45 minutes before the report was released publicly, the White House was working to downplay to slip-ups, saying it’s common for people to misspeak.

She said in meetings, she had never witnessed Biden confuse names.

Yet the picture Hur painted of Biden in the report went well beyond the occasional mistaken name. He said in interviews, the president did not remember the years he was vice president or when his son Beau died.

Immediately after the report was released, White House officials and Biden's personal lawyer forcefully rejected what they said were inappropriate and incorrect statements about his memory.

President Joe Biden on Thursday touted his cooperation in special counsel Robert Hur’s probe, drawing a sharp contrast with how his predecessor has treated a similar probe.

In a statement Thursday, Biden said that he was “pleased” that the special counsel’s report into his handling of classified documents did not include any charges. The president also added that this was “an exhaustive investigation” that went back more than 40 years. 

And in a comment that will draw comparison to Donald Trump’s alleged attempts to withhold classified documents after he left office, Biden said his participation in Hur’s investigation was what Americans deserved.

Hur noted in his report there were distinctions between Trump and Biden's classified documents cases. Among them is the fact that the National Archives repeatedly tried and failed to get back documents in Trump’s possession. At one point, the FBI secured a search warrant to search his Florida estate.

Biden’s attorneys, on the other hand, notified the National Archives of the materials found in his possession. Those documents were discovered on November 2, just six days before the midterm elections, but the president’s attorneys only publicly acknowledged the discovery of the documents on November 7 — when news reports about the discovery broke. 

Biden’s statement added, “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.”

The president also sought to explain the circumstances surrounding his interviews with the special counsel’s team, saying they were five hours long over the course of two days right after Israel had been attacked on October 7. 

Biden concluded the statement by saying, “I take these issues seriously and no one has ever questioned that.”

Special counsel Robert Hur released a searing report Thursday that concluded President Joe Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified military and national security information but will not face charges after a year-long investigation into his handling of classified documents.

You can read the full report here:

The White House counsel and President Joe Biden’s personal attorney criticized several of the assertions made in special counsel Robert Hur’s report, including comments about the president’s memory.

White House counsel Richard Sauber and Biden personal attorney Bob Bauer wrote a five-page letter to Hur on Monday, saying that raising issues with Biden’s memory was “entirely superfluous.”

In a follow-up statement, Bauer accused Hur of “investigative excess" and said he flouted Justice Department regulations and norms.

“We do not believe that the report's treatment of President Biden's memory is accurate or appropriate,” Sauber and Bauer wrote. “The report uses highly prejudicial language to describe a commonplace occurrence among witnesses: a lack of recall of years-old events.” 

In a statement Thursday, Bauer said that the special counsel “could not refrain from investigative excess, perhaps unsurprising given the intense pressures of the current political environment.”  

“Whatever the impact of those pressures on the final Report, it flouts Department regulations and norms,” Bauer said. “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.” 

A spokesperson for the special counsel’s office declined to comment on the alleged “inaccurate and inappropriate comments in the Special Counsel’s report.”

Sauber said in a statement that the report acknowledges “mistakes when packing documents at the end of an Administration or when Members of Congress leave office are unfortunately a common occurrence.” 

“We disagree with a number of inaccurate and inappropriate comments in the Special Counsel’s report,” he said. “Nonetheless, the most important decision the Special Counsel made—that no charges are warranted—is firmly based on the facts and evidence.”

The report includes a number of photos depicting various parts of President Joe Biden’s homes, materials at issue in the investigation and other relevant scenes over the years.

One such photo shows notebooks “seized from (a) file cabinet under (a) television in (Biden’s) Delaware home office.”

The report said that Biden “routinely took notes in his notebooks about classified subjects and during meetings where classified information was discussed."

“For example, he regularly took notes related to the President's Daily Brief, which typically contains classified information. He also regularly took notes during meetings in the White House Situation Room, and numerous photographs document this practice,” according to the report.

Investigators noted that although “none of the notebooks have classification markings, some of the notebooks contain information that remains classified up to the Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information level.”

Another set of photos showed Biden’s Delaware garage, which “contained a significant volume of boxes, storage, and clutter,” including one that contained classified documents related to Afghanistan policy.

House Judiciary Republicans called special counsel Robert Hur’s decision not to prosecute President Joe Biden after finding he willfully retracted classified information a "double-standard."

More about the report: Hur's investigation found Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified military and national security information, but he will not face charges.

In the report, Hur noted that Biden cooperated with the investigation and returned the classified documents once they were discovered — noting the significant differences between this case and the one against former President Donald Trump, who was charged last year in relation to his handling of classified documents after he left the White House.

Even before the report’s release, Republican lawmakers vowed to continue their own congressional investigation into the matter. Congressional lawmakers received a hard copy of the report on Thursday afternoon, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed special counsel Robert Hur, a former Trump-appointed US attorney, to lead the criminal probe after Biden’s aides found classified files at his home in Delaware and a private office in Washington, DC. 

Though Biden frequently avoids commenting on the case, he said in January 2023 he was surprised to learn that classified documents were found in his former office and that he did not know what was in them. The White House Counsel’s Office has already reviewed the report, according to a spokesperson, and declined to exert any executive privilege on its content.  

CNN previously reported that US intelligence memos and briefing materials covering a range of topics, including Ukraine, Iran and the United Kingdom, were among the documents found at the locations connected to Biden, according to a source familiar with the matter.   

After documents were found at Biden’s home later in January, he said he was cooperating fully with the Justice Department. Biden added that the documents were in a “locked garage.”   

The federal probe included interviews with a broad spectrum of witnesses, including Biden himself, who sat for an interview with investigators in October. Investigators also interviewed longtime Biden adviser and current counselor Steve Ricchetti, former White House legal and communications aides, and Kathy Chung, an ex-executive assistant to Biden. 

Prosecutors revealed in the report that they considered, but ultimately declined, charging a man who ghostwrote Joe Biden's 2017 memoir with obstruction of justice after learning the writer deleted audio recordings he had that were of “significant evidentiary value.” 

The writer later turned over his computer and external hard drive, according to the report, and the FBI was able to mostly recover the deleted files. 

The special counsel investigation found that Biden knew about the classified documents in his home as far back as 2017, when he was no longer vice president, and that he shared some of the information with the ghostwriter for his memoir published that year. 

Findings from Special counsel Robert Hur's report on the investigation into Joe Biden's mishandling classified documents are likely to draw harsh criticism from former President Donald Trump and his allies in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election.  

Republicans have long drawn parallels between Hur’s investigation and that of special counsel Jack Smith, who last year brought charges against the former president related to his handling of classified documents after he left the White House, despite critical differences in the two cases.  

Hur notes the distinction between the two cases in the report: