‘Holy s***’: Scathing report might be the end of Biden ‘embarrassment’

Joe Biden appears to have escaped criminal charges but a bombshell report released Friday may have done critical damage.

President Joe Biden “wilfully retained and disclosed classified materials”, special counsel Robert Hur found in a bombshell report released Friday — though Hur recommended against criminal charges, in part because a jury might view Biden as an “elderly man with a poor memory”.

Biden, 81, flouted legal restrictions on keeping sensitive documents throughout his 36 years in the Senate and after his eight-year vice presidency — stashing them in cardboard boxes “surrounded by household detritus” in his garage in Wilmington, Delaware, and other locations, the 388-page report said.

Investigators even uncovered a recording of Biden confiding in his ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer in April 2017, three months after leaving the vice presidency, that he still had official records because “I didn’t want to turn them in” — sounding similar to former President Donald Trump, who faces 40 criminal charges and up to 450 years in prison for resisting handing over documents after leaving the White House in 2021.

But perhaps most damaging for the president, Hur — a former Maryland US lawyer — suggested that jurors would not hold Biden liable for his actions on account of his perceived mental decline, even though he is seeking a second four-year term in November.

“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,” the report says.

Holy s*** pic.twitter.com/CafwLf4hSQ

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) February 8, 2024

Hur’s recommendation went viral on Twitter on Friday with many suggesting it was a damning insight into a man hoping to be re-elected later this year.

“It appears that The Party has decided it is time to move on. This is an embarrassment to the country and to Biden’s legacy,” tweeted Bill Ackman. “I would be surprised if he does not make an announcement to step aside by next week.”

When Biden sat for questions with Hur’s investigators October 8 and October 9, he presented himself as confused on many points — though the White House has regularly maintained the chief executive is mentally fit for office despite similar public errors.

Biden “did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended (‘if it was 2013 — when did I stop being Vice President?’), and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began (‘in 2009, am I still Vice President?’),” the report says.

“He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died [May 2015]. And his memory appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him. Among other things, he mistakenly said he ‘had a real difference’ of opinion with General Karl Eikenberry, when, in fact, Eikenberry was an ally whom Mr. Biden cited approvingly in his thanksgiving [2009] memo to President Obama.”

US President Joe Biden. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)

Zwonitzer also told Hur’s investigators that he deleted some audio files of Biden after the special counsel investigation began — and was aware of the probe when he did so.

“I’m not going to say how much of the percentage it was of my motivation,” the writer said, according to the report.

A dozen official documents were determined to possess information that still qualifies as top secret — as was material from 10 handwritten notebooks and two notecards kept by Biden. Scores of additional documents contained secret or confidential information.

Authorities also found information in the “notebooks [that] remains classified up to the Top Secret level and includes Sensitive Compartmented Information, including from compartments used to protect information concerning human intelligence sources,” the report said.

White House lawyer Richard Sauber chided Hur in a Thursday afternoon statement for including “a number of inaccurate and inappropriate comments” in the report — without disputing the accuracy of the descriptions of the president.

Although Biden’s lapse of memory may have been useful for avoiding criminal liability, it is likely to be a serious political problem, as national polls already show large majorities of voters believe he is too old, infirm, or both to hold office.

“If you’re too senile to stand trial, then you’re too senile to be president,” said Alex Pfeiffer, spokesman for Make America Great Again, a pro-Trump PAC.

Hur wrote that his team “considered whether to charge the ghostwriter with obstruction of justice, but we believe the evidence would be insufficient to obtain a conviction and therefore declined to prosecute him.”

“While the ghostwriter admitted that he deleted the recordings after he learned of the special counsel’s investigation, the evidence falls short of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that he intended to impede an investigation, which is the intent required by law,” the report said.

Biden ‘wilfully’ kept classified info and would come off as an “elderly man with poor memory” at trial, a scathing report says. Picture: DOJ

Trump himself, who is younger than Biden by three years and seven months, fumed about what he called a double standard in the US legal system — as he prepares to stand trial over similar allegations beginning May 20 in South Florida.

“THIS HAS NOW PROVEN TO BE A TWO-TIERED SYSTEM OF JUSTICE AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL SELECTIVE PROSECUTION!” the 77-year-old wrote on Truth Social.

“The Biden Documents Case is 100 times different and more severe than mine. I did nothing wrong, and I co-operated far more. What Biden did is outrageously criminal – He had 50 years of documents, 50 times more than I had, and ‘WILFULLY RETAINED’ them,” Trump went on.

“I was covered by the Presidential Records Act, Secret Service was always around, and GSA delivered the documents. Deranged [special counsel] Jack Smith should drop this Case immediately. ELECTION INTERFERENCE.”

Biden said in his own paper statement: “This was an exhaustive investigation going back more than 40 years, even into the 1970s when I was a young Senator. I co-operated completely, threw up no roadblocks, and sought no delays.”

“Over my career in public service, I have always worked to protect America’s security,” the president added. “I take these issues seriously and no one has ever questioned that.”

About an hour after the Hur report was released, Biden told House Democrats at a conference in Virginia that “there’s stark differences between this case and Donald Trump.”

Among those differences, Biden contended, were that Trump “obstructed justice by enlisting others to destroy evidence” whereas he “turned in classified documents to the National Archives.”

Biden also dismissed Hur as a “Republican counsel” and declared “this matter is now closed,” thumping his fist on a lectern.

This article was originally published by the New York Post and reproduced with permission