President Biden spent the last two days being interviewed by the special counsel in his case.
What an excellent use of his time when nothing much is happening in the world. As I’m sure was intended by the GOP.
GOP: “How can we damage the country as much as possible?”
That’s their basic platform now.
That would be damage it and blame the Democrats for the results.
How is the GOP involved?
- Biden’s staff discovered the docs;
- Biden’s lawyers notified Archives;
- Archives reviewed and referred to Justice;
- AG appointed special counsel who is investigating.
I’m sure the GOP is chortling over it, but I don’t see any causal role.
I’ve always gotten the impression that the GOP has tried to keep this story in the public view to smear Biden. I may well be wrong about that idea.
What the GOP has done is attempt to set up an equivalence between that sequence above, of Biden’s staff discovering the documents, his lawyers notifying, so on… and Trump’s stealing sharing secrets hiding denying obstructing and instructing others to aid in the obstruction.
Seen early in this thread even.
the 400 page report is in. no charges in the biden classified documents case.
YeahBut …
Special counsel Robert Hur released a searing report Thursday that concluded President Joe Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified military and national security information but will not face charges after a year-long investigation into his handling of classified documents.
Not a good look at the moment. I can’t wait to learn more.
The headline says willfull but the article appears to say it was not willfull. I’m a little confused.
Lots of subjective judgments as to what a jury would do, especially damning for a presidential candidate:
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,”
Time to search the houses of Obama, Bush and I guess Carter.
Even though there weren’t any charges, the GOP got all they wanted with reports like this about Biden’s memory:
Just to answer my question. The special counsel found evidence Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified information, but that “Biden’s age and presentation would make it more difficult to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that the now 81-year-old was guilty of willfully committing a crime.”
So more a prosecutorial decision versus a lack of evidence.
This is rather bad.
That said, Biden could have a thorough medical and cognitive exam from Dr. Ronny Jackson and all of this malarkey would instantly vaporize.
That sounds like an extremely inappropriate comment for a report of this type.
There was another statement in the report that ‘bden did not intend to commti a crime’ which was a requirement of the law.
In addition. Mr. Biden’s memory was significantly limited, both during his recorded interviews with the ghostwriter in 2017, and in his interview with our office in 2023. And his cooperation with our investigation, including by reporting to the government that the Afghanistan documents were in his Delaware garage, will likely convince some jurors that he made an innocent mistake, rather than acting willfully-that is, with intent to break the law-as the statute requires.
I’m genuinely not clear how that doesn’t conflict directly with willful retention.
I was just reminded that Robert Hur is a Republican, so that explains the motivation behind all the memory comments.
This is the willful element - it must be deliberate; not accidental or negligent. There is a single piece of evidence it was willful - Biden told his ghostwriter that the documents Biden was using to help write his book were classified - he knew they were classified and disclosed them anyways - so certainly evidence the disclosure was willful (and then Biden presumably retained/kept that document for awhile).
In this prosecutors mind, he just thinks it would be hard to convince a jury it was willful disclosure due to Biden is nice/poor memory/he thought he could (even though that utterance is in direct contrast), etc. So the prosecutor doesn’t just want to rely on that single utterance to the ghostwriter to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. Again, prosecutorial discretion. Doesn’t think he has a strong enough case*.
*He can’t bring anything now, but after Biden is not president/older/worse memory - he’s thinking of that future jury.
Exactly. Bullshit partisan sniping, entirely unnecessary for the report. Just another consequence of the bullshit rule that special prosecutors and special investigators always have to be Republicans.