The U.S. Department of Justice released its long-awaited investigation into Joe Biden’s mishandling of classified documents Thursday, delivering a damning assessment of the President as an “elderly man with a poor memory”. The Mail has more.
Although the report did not recommend bringing charges against the 81 year-old , it provides a cascade of damaging findings about files found in Biden’s garage as well as the president’s fitness for office.
In interviews with investigators, Biden became muddled about the dates he was Vice President and could not even remember the year in which his son Beau died.
And it said his cavalier attitude to classified documents, such as his habit of reading sensitive files to a ghostwriter, posed a significant national security risk.
One of the reasons they decided not to press charges was because “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”.
Biden found himself in the spotlight after his predecessor Donald Trump was charged with illegally keeping classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home.
Special Counsel Robert Hur spent a year investigating. His report will likely undermine the Biden campaign’s attempts to use the charges against Trump in the 2024 election.
Instead, there is ammunition for Trump, with a series of revelations about Biden’s mental sharpness. …
Photographs in the report include some of the classified Afghanistan documents, showing how they were apparently stored with other household items, including a ladder and a wicker basket.
The investigation said there was plenty of evidence to suggest that Biden was aware that he was not allowed to keep classified handwritten notes after leaving office, pointing out that his long Washington career meant he was familiar “with the measures taken to safeguard classified information and the need for those measures to prevent harm to national security”.
Even so, notebooks crammed with classified information were stored in unlocked drawers at his home.