US President Joe Biden will not face criminal charges for taking classified information about national security matters with him when he left the vice presidency in 2017, a prosecutor has concluded.
Special Counsel Robert Hur said he opted against bringing criminal charges because Mr Biden cooperated with his investigation and would likely prove to be a sympathetic defendant at trial.
“We have considered that, 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,” Mr Hur wrote.
His conclusion ensures that President Biden, unlike Donald Trump – his expected rival for the White House this year – will not risk prison time for mishandling sensitive government documents.
But it could cause further embarrassment for Mr Biden as he tries to convince voters that – at 81 – he is not too old to serve another four-year term.
He has also sought to draw a contrast with Mr Trump on issues of personal ethics and national security.
Mr Hur wrote that President Biden’s memory was “significantly limited” when he was interviewed by members of his prosecution team.
A lawyer for Mr Biden defended his handling of the documents but criticised the report for “inappropriate comments”.
“As the Special Counsel report recognizes, the President fully cooperated from day one,” Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president. said in a statement.
“His team promptly self-reported the classified documents that were found to ensure that these documents were immediately returned to the government because the President knows that’s where they belong.
“As the Special Counsel report acknowledges, mistakes when packing documents at the end of an Administration or when Members of Congress leave office are unfortunately a common occurrence.
“It’s happened with every Administration, Republican and Democrat, for the past 50 years.
“We disagree with a number of inaccurate and inappropriate comments in the Special Counsel’s report.
“Nonetheless, the most important decision the Special Counsel made – that no charges are warranted – is firmly based on the facts and evidence,” he said.
‘Classified stuff’ found ‘downstairs’ in Virginia house
The investigation found that Mr Biden took classified information about the US war in Afghanistan and other national security matters.
These included a handwritten memo to then-president Barack Obama in 2009 opposing a planned troop surge in Afghanistan and notes related to intelligence briefings and national security meetings, the report found.
President Biden told a writer working on his memoir during a February 2017 conversation at a home he was renting in Virginia that he had “just found all the classified stuff downstairs,” according to the report.
Mr Hur’s findings said the conversation created “the best case” for charges against Mr Biden.
But Mr Hur wrote that the documents may have been taken to Mr Biden’s home while he was vice president, when he had the authority to keep such documents.
Members of the president’s legal team found the classified papers at the office of his Washington think tank and his personal residence in Wilmington, Delaware.
Mr Trump faces a 40-count charge sheet for retaining highly sensitive national security documents at his Florida resort after leaving office in 2021 and obstructing US government efforts to retrieve them.
While the two cases have similarities, there are also some notable differences.
The White House said that Mr Biden’s lawyers found a small number of classified documents and turned them over after discovery.
Mr Trump resisted doing so until a 2022 FBI search turned up about 100 classified documents, leading to obstruction of justice charges against him and two employees at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
Mr Hur, who served in senior roles at the Department of Justice during the Trump administration, was appointed in January 2023 to oversee the investigation.
Attorney General Merrick Garland, who was nominated by President Biden, put Mr Hur in charge of the inquiry to give it a degree of independence from the leadership of the department.
Mr Hur’s investigators interviewed President Biden in October as part of his investigation.
The White House said that he and his team cooperated with the inquiry.
Mr Hur’s decision not to bring criminal charges is likely to fuel accusations of a double standard from Mr Trump and his Republican allies.
The former president was charged after prosecutors said he refused for months to turn over boxes containing records he had taken to Florida and took steps to conceal them after the US government demanded their return.
An FBI search in August 2022 turned up more than 100 classified documents on the property, prosecutors alleged.
Mr Trump has pleaded not guilty and accused prosecutors of political motivations. A trial is scheduled for May but is likely to be delayed.
President Biden’s lawyers said they notified the National Archives after finding a “small number” of classified documents in his office at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in November 2022, prompting a federal investigation.
Additional documents were later found in a garage and library at Mr Biden’s Delaware home and turned over to the Department of Justice.
The president faced criticism at the time for delays in notifying the public about the discoveries.
