On February 8, 2024 former Special Counsel Robert Hur declined to prosecute President Joe Biden for willfully mishandling classified information while he was a private citizen.
"Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen. These materials included (1) marked classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, and (2) notebooks containing Mr. Biden's handwritten entries about issues of national security and foreign policy implicating sensitive intelligence sources and methods. FBI agents recovered these materials from the garage, offices, and basement den in Mr. Biden's Wilmington, Delaware home," Hur revealed in a lengthy report about the investigation.
Hur's decision to decline charges was met with outrage and claims of a double standard as Special Counsel Jack Smith continues his prosecution of former President Donald Trump. Smith claims Trump mishandled classified information after he left the White House and obstructed his investigation into the matter.
Now, newly released transcripts from Hur's interviews with President Biden further reveal special treatment for Biden.
For example, Biden told investigators notebooks containing classified information were "his" and therefore he could keep them. From the October 9, 2023 transcript:
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MR. KRICKBAUM: And was it your understanding after you left the Vice Presidency that at least for marked classified documents that belonged to the government, that you were not authorized to have those at your house after you were Vice President? Was that your understanding?
PRESIDENT BIDEN: I didn't think of it that way. I just thought of what would I need them for and I had no authority to have them. I mean, why would I look, so I mean, I -- just a continuation of an eight-year habit, of returning classified information to its source. I mean, I don't think it was conscious, like oh wait a minute, I got to change my policy now here. I'm no longer Vice President. Why would I keep them? And -- anyway.
MR. KRICKBAUM: Okay. But I think, I think it would be helpful for us to understand -- I think with respect to your notebooks, that you wrote by hand, you view those as yours -- them?
PRESIDENT BIDEN: They are mine.
Further, Biden improperly kept a memo on Afghanistan "for posterity."
MR. KRICKBAUM: Okay. Did were you aware that you had kept it after your term as Vice President? Did you know that you had it?
...
PRESIDENT BIDEN: ...I wanted to hang -- I guess I wanted to hang onto it just for posterity's sake.
Trump also believed many of the documents, which he says he declassified after leaving the White House, were his.
"I had a small number of boxes in storage at Mar-a-Lago and guarded by Secret Service...the FBI raided my home," Trump said during an October 2022 rally. "They should give me back immediately everything they've taken from me because it's mine."
Biden stored boxes of classified information in his unsecured Wilmington, Delaware garage -- in addition to many other unsafe places. He didn't have declassification power as a U.S. Senator or as vice president. Certainly not as a private citizen.
But because Trump isn't a "sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory," he has been charged while Biden walks free.
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