(Daily Mail) The Department of Justice released its long-awaited investigation into Joe Biden‘s mishandling of classified documents Thursday, delivering a damning assessment of the president as an ‘elderly man with a poor memory.’
Although the report did not recommend bringing charges against the 81-year-old , it provides a cascade of damaging findings about files found in Biden’s garage as well as the president’s fitness for office.
In interviews with investigators, Biden became muddled about the dates he was vice president and could not even remember the year in which his son Beau died.
And it said his cavalier attitude to classified documents, such as his habit of reading sensitive files to a ghostwriter, posed a significant national security risk.
One of the reasons they decided not to press charges was because ‘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’.
President Joe Biden will not be criminally charged with stashing classified documents in his garage and private office
Department of Justice photographs reveal boxes and boxes of files stored in unsecure locations, such as the garage of his home.
Biden found himself in the spotlight after his predecessor Donald Trump was charged with illegally keeping classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home.
Special Counsel Robert Hur spent a year investigating. His report will likely undermine the Biden campaign’s attempts to use the charges against Trump in the 2024 election.
Instead, there is ammunition for Trump, with a series of revelations about Biden’s mental sharpness.
It describes his failure to remember key dates in his career and his personal life when he was interviewed by investigators.
‘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 reportedly said.
‘He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died.’
He was also apparently hazy on the debate around withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, which was such a key part of the first months of his presidency.
‘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,’ the report concludes.
The long-awaited report will provide ammunition for critics who say that Biden is too old to be president. It describes frequent memory lapses
The report is crammed with pictures of documents recovered from Biden’s home or an office he used when he was vice president
The box circled in the foreground contained documents about Afghanistan. The picture was taken in December 2022 in Biden’s garage, with other household items
The report details lapses in Biden’s memory, both in conversations with his ghostwriter and with investigators. The conclusion is that jurors may have though he made an innocent mistake
Photographs in the report include some of the classified Afghanistan documents, showing how they were apparently stored with other household items, including a ladder and a wicker basket.
The investigation said there was plenty of evidence to suggest that Biden was aware that he was not allowed to keep classified handwritten notes after leaving office, pointing out that his long Washington career meant he was familiar ‘with the measures taken to safeguard classified information and the need for those measures to prevent harm to national security.’
Even so, notebooks crammed with classified information were stored in unlocked drawers at his home.
And it was not simply the case that the notebooks were misplaced and forgotten.
‘He consulted the notebooks liberally during hours of discussions with his ghostwriter and viewed them as highly private and valued possessions with which he was unwilling to part,’ writes Hur.
Biden said he was pleased that no charges would be brought and declared the matter closed.
