President Joe Biden faced nationwide concern in the wake of special counsel Robert Hur‘s alarming report detailing allegations Biden struggled to recall key moments in his career.
But often overlooked from the report is that Biden knowingly kept classified documents.
The 15-month investigation into Biden did not result in criminal charges, mostly due to Hur’s claim that a jury would not convict him because of his memory recall issues.
“We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview with him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory,” he wrote in a 345-page report.
National security experts, however, criticized Biden over Hur’s claim that the president “willfully retained” the classified documents from his tenure as vice president and a Delaware senator.
“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.
One of the more alarming points the experts cited was Biden’s disclosure to his ghostwriter that he found classified documents in his Virginia home in 2017. It is not clear that he returned those documents.
Another moment for concern was that on three occasions, Biden divulged classified information to the ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer and stored notebooks with sensitive information in unlocked drawers in his home office.
“It may not be criminal, but it’s reckless and awful, because you have no idea what sources and methods you are putting at risk,” Chuck Rosenberg, a former federal prosecutor, told NBC News. “Someone who served as the vice president of the United States should know better.”
The news that Biden retained classified documents was first acknowledged through a media report on Jan. 9, 2023, but the documents were discovered in late 2022 at several locations, including a Delaware garage of Biden.
The president maintained he was “surprised” to learn of the documents and claimed he did not know what was in them.
Hur suggested it was these classified documents, some of which were marked “top secret,” that Biden discussed with his ghostwriter in 2017. Biden said he had “just found all the classified stuff downstairs” in a Virginia home he was renting at the time. Hur said there wasn’t any evidence that Biden turned over the documents.
The report also specified that Hur could not definitively prove the documents were the same documents Biden was discussing in 2017.
It’s a stark contrast to the messaging from the White House that Biden did not know he had classified materials in his home.
White House spokesman Ian Sams told NBC News the report “found the totality of evidence in fact does not support willful retention.”
“The report also notes how, in early 2017, the President did find another marked classified document and did turn it in, via his aide, which illustrates precisely what he told the special counsel,” Sams said. “That if he had found classified documents he would have returned them.”
Sams also said Biden told Hur he believed the 2017 incident was about an unclassified handwritten letter sent to former President Barack Obama.
The Hur report claimed Biden “did not remember anything at all about this incident,” which led Hur to include his statements on Biden’s mental acuity in the report.
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Mark Zaid, an attorney whose specialty is classified information, told NBC News the Hur report was “worse than I expected by way of the president’s conduct over the years. But even then, none of it surprised me.”
“It sends a horrible message to the workforce that our senior leadership is not held to account for its mishandling of classified information.”
