Biden challenger Dean Phillips says classified documents report ‘all but handed’ election to Trump

Long-shot Democratic primary challenger Rep. Dean Phillips said special counsel Robert Hur’s scathing report on President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents “all but handed the 2024 election to Donald Trump.”

Phillips (D-Minn.), 55, running to unseat Biden, said the 388-page report, which described the president as an “elderly man” with “diminished faculties,” affirmed that he is unfit for a second term.

“The Report simply affirms what most Americans already know, that the President cannot continue to serve as our Commander-in-Chief beyond his term ending January 20, 2025,” Phillips said in a statement to Fox News Digital Thursday.

“Already facing the lowest approval numbers in modern history and losing in each of the key battleground states, this Report has all but handed the 2024 election to Donald Trump if Joe Biden is the Democratic nominee — and I invite fellow Democrats to face the truth,” he continued.

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Long-shot Democratic primary challenger Rep. Dean Phillips said the report on President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents “all but handed” the 2024 election to Donald Trump. AP

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Biden’s Delaware garage where a box of documents was found. DOJ

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The documents were found in the same garage as Biden’s classic car. Joe Biden/YouTube

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Phillips said the report boosts Trump’s chances of securing the presidency. AFP via Getty Images

Phillips added that it was a “sad day” for America, as well as for Biden and his family.

In his scathing report, Hur concluded that Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials” after leaving the vice presidency — but he did not recommend criminal charges.

Joe Biden's classified documents probe report

  • Special counsel Robert Hur determined that President Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials” after leaving office as vice president in 2016.
  • The records kept by Biden included documents on military and foreign policy in Afghanistan as well as other national security and foreign policy issues.

View this document on Scribd

  • Biden kept the classified documents in part to assist with the writing of his memoirs. According to the report, Biden told a ghostwriter in a 2017 conversation that he had “just found all the classified stuff downstairs.”
  • Despite the findings, Hur’s 388-page report recommended that the president not face charges.
  • The special counsel noted that Biden would likely present himself to a jury as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” if he were to face trial.

Hur wrote that the 81-year-old president displayed “significant limitations in memory” during his interviews with investigators in October, forgetting key events in his life.

But if brought to trial, the special counsel argued, the commander-on-chief would present himself “as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

On Thursday night, an infuriated Biden lashed out at the contents of the Hur report, which he dismissed as “just plain wrong.”

“I am well-meaning, and I’m an elderly man and I know what the hell I’m doing,” Biden seethed in his address from the White House.

Moments later, he mistakenly referred to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi as the “president of Mexico.”

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