DOJ report digs into Biden's mishandling classified documents, 'poor memory': 5 takeaways

President Joe Biden was careless in his handling of classified documents scattered across his Delaware residence, but federal investigators concluded he will avoid prosecution − in part − because of his “poor memory.”

That’s according to a long-awaited Justice Department report released Thursday. Accusations of a legal double-standard among the president’s Republican opponents are bound to intensify, and the report’s focus on memory issues could add to anxiety about his health on the part of his Democratic allies.

Special counsel Robert Hur, a former Trump administration official who led the investigation, said the evidence doesn’t establish Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and that charges were “unwarranted based on our consideration of the aggravating and mitigating factors.”

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Biden, for his part, focused on the fact that he was cleared of official wrongdoing in the report.

“The bottom line is, the special counsel, in my case, decided against moving forward with any charges,” Biden said on Thursday. “This matter is now closed.”

Yet, the matter is far from over.

Within the 345-page report were shocking revelations about the president, who has been hounded about his age. He and his supporters will find hard to ignore them.

Investigators were blunt in suggesting that Biden, 81, wasn’t mentally sharp during interviews. The president’s reelection campaign has repeatedly pushed back on concerns about Biden’s age.

Here are the big takeaways.

Why didn’t they pursue criminal charges?

Detail photo of pages from Special Counsel Robert K. Hur report on the investigation into the removal and retention of classified documents by President Joe Biden at his home in Delaware and at the Penn Biden Center. The Justice Department notified President Joe Biden it wouldn’t pursue criminal charges for his handling of classified documents, which were found at his former office in Washington, D.C., and at his home in Delaware. The report said the president’s document practices “present serious risks to national security,” and that Biden presented himself “as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

After a year-long probe, special counsel Robert Hur found evidence that Biden “willfully retained” classified materials. Hur concluded, nevertheless, that investigators “do not believe this evidence is sufficient, as jurors would likely find reasonable doubt for one or more of several reasons.”

Biden’s materials included marked classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan; notebooks containing Biden’s handwritten entries about issues of national security, and foreign policy “implicating sensitive intelligence sources and methods.”

FBI agents found those materials in the garage, offices and basement den of the president’s Wilmington, Delaware home, the report said.

Some of the documents were classified at the highest level of secrecy, and “spanned Mr. Biden’s career in national public life” but were retained during times when he was a private citizen.

Hur said he and his team ultimately concluded that no criminal charges were warranted “even if Department of Justice policy did not foreclose criminal charges against a sitting president.”

One of the reasons it would be difficult to convict Biden is there might be reasonable doubt as to whether he knew he had top-secret materials.

Another is that Biden’s “memory was significantly limited” which Hur concluded would make it hard for a jury to convict beyond a reasonable doubt.

Biden couldn’t recall when he was VP, son’s death

Reno Mayor Hillary Schieve arrives with President Joe Biden to the East Room for an event for mayors attending the U.S. Conference of Mayors Winter Meeting to the White House, Friday, Jan. 19, 2024, in Washington, D.C.

What is certainly bound to be injected into the 2024 campaign’s bloodstream is how this report calls attention about Biden’s memory lapses.

It describes Biden as a “well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.”

At various points investigators note how the president’s “memory appeared hazy” when discussing the war in Afghanistan debate, “that was once so important to him.”

Biden couldn’t remember important details about his own life either, according to investigators.

“In his interview with our office, Mr. Biden’s memory was worse. He did not remember when he was vice president… He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died,” the report says.

Hur hammered home how Biden exhibited, “diminished faculties and faulty memory” in interviews whether with federal investigators or author Mark Zwonitzer, his ghostwriter.

This couldn’t come at a worse time for the president, amid ongoing concerns among voters about Biden’s age and acuity. In the past couple of days, for instance, he has twice confused current European leaders with foreign leaders who died years or decades ago.

Trump has also been dogged by the age and health questions on the trail as of late, but that didn’t stop his allies from pouncing.

“If you’re too senile to stand trial, then you’re too senile to be president. Joe Biden is unfit to lead this nation,” Alex Pfeiffer, spokesman for Make America Great Again Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC, said in a statement.

Team Biden bites back at report’s claims

President Joe Biden delivers remarks on the Emergency National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act in the State Dining Room of the White House, Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) ORG XMIT: DCEV234

The White House, Biden campaign and Democrats at-large have been very protective of the president when questions about his health arise.

Those surrogates were quick to defend him on Thursday, citing his exhaustion during his lengthy interview with Hur’s team during right after the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack in Israel.

“The inappropriate criticisms of the president’s memory are inaccurate, gratuitous, and wrong. We told the special counsel this,” Ian Sams, a White House spokesman, said in a statement.

The White House also blasted Hur’s quips about Biden’s memory, calling those portions inaccurate and inappropriate.

“The report uses highly prejudicial language to describe a commonplace occurrence among witnesses: a lack of recall of years-old events,” Sams said.

Other Democrats and Biden allies cast the parts about the president’s memory as an unnecessary.

Some recalled how Hur’s comments reminded them of former FBI Director James Comey’s criticisms of Hillary Clinton when he decided not to charge her in a classified documents case during the 2016 presidential campaign.

“What Robert Hur did in his report with these irrelevant and extraneous remarks is the same thing DOJ used as the basis to fire James Comey in 2017,” said Bradley P. Moss, an attorney who specializes in national security issues.

“Seven years later, they did it again,” he added. “Seriously. Unreal.”

What is Donald Trump saying?

Former President Donald Trump pumps his fist during a campaign event ahead of the Iowa Caucus on Sunday, Jan. 14, 2024, at Simpson College in Indianola.

Former President Donald Trump didn’t mince words, eviscerating the DOJ’s decision to forgo charges against Biden.

“The Biden documents case is 100 times different and more severe than mine,” Trump said in Truth Social post. “I did nothing wrong… What Biden did is outrageously criminal.”

The Republican front-runner added how he sees this as another example of “election interference,” a “two-tiered system of justice” that exonerated Biden while he faces criminal charges for allegedly hoarding classified documents.

The two cases are very different, legal experts have said, with Biden voluntarily working with prosecutors while Trump defiantly refused to do so.

But that isn’t expected to satisfy GOP critics, who have for months been railing about a double standard being applied to Biden and his son, Hunter, who faces criminal tax and gun charges.

GOP Speaker Johnson calls Biden ‘unfit’

Almost immediately GOP officials, current and former, cast the report in grim terms.

Speaker Mike Johnson, in a joint statement with House GOP leaders, said the report’s revelations about the president’s health are disturbing.

“A man too incapable of being held accountable for mishandling classified information is certainly unfit for the Oval Office,” the statement said.

Former Rep. Peter Meijer, a Michigan Republican who supported Trump’s impeachment, said that beyond the 2024 election, the details outlined in the report raise grave concerns given Biden’s role as commander-in-chief.

“This is both sad on a human level and frightening from a governing and national security standpoint,” said Meijer, who is now running for Senate in Michigan.

In many ways the report will likely be cast a political indictment by conservatives, even if there won’t be a legal one.

Its voluminous details will also ratchet up pressure on Biden to make more public appearances and do more interviews.

The president recently announced, for instance, he was skipping the traditional presidential Super Bowl interview.

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley, who has regularly made Biden and Trump’s age an issue, once again said the president needs to be up front with voters, and take a mental competency test.

“Joe Biden can’t remember major events in his life… That is sad, but it will be even sadder if we have a person in the White House who is not mentally up to the most important job in the world,” Haley said.

Contributing: David Jackson and Francesca Chambers

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: DOJ report digs into Biden’s mishandling classified documents, ‘poor memory’: 5 takeaways