Joe Biden knowingly kept, shared classified material from his time as Vice President: special counsel

In a major blow for Joe Biden, a special counsel report found the ‘well-meaning’ president was so forgetful he couldn’t remember the dates of his vice presidency or the death of his son Beau.

US President Joe Biden kept and shared classified documents from his time as vice president. Picture: AFP.

President Biden was sloppy in holding on to classified material related to some of his most consequential policy debates as vice president, eager to show that history would prove him right, according to a special counsel investigation that yielded no criminal charges but is likely to add a fraught new dynamic to the 2024 presidential contest.

Biden wilfully retained and disclosed to a ghostwriter classified materials while a private citizen, after he was vice president, including documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan and notebooks with Biden’s handwritten notes implicating sensitive intelligence sources, according to a report from Special Counsel Robert Hur, made public Thursday.

“Mr Biden’s lapses in attention and vigilance demonstrate why former officials should not keep classified information unsecured at home and read them aloud to others,” Hur wrote in the 345-page document.

Biden aides have worried the revelations could embarrass him as he campaigns for re-election against Donald Trump, the likely Republican nominee who himself faces felony charges related to classified material he kept at his Florida estate.

Hur said in the report that he didn’t think prosecutors could pursue a criminal case against Biden over the classified material, in part because there were some innocent explanations for Biden hanging on to the material that jurors might find convincing. “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 said.

In further embarassment for Biden, Hur said that his probe had found a president with such reduced mental capacities that he could not remember the dates even of his vice presidency under Barack Obama and the death of his son Beau to cancer in 2015.

Joe Biden trips on the steps as he arrives on stage to speak about his Bidenomics agenda in October. Picture: AFP.

The White House said Thursday it was “pleased” by the decision not to file charges against Biden, 81. However, it added that “we disagree with a number of inaccurate and inappropriate comments in the special counsel’s report.”

“We do not believe that the report’s treatment of President Biden’s memory is accurate or appropriate. The report uses highly prejudicial language to describe a commonplace occurrence among witnesses: a lack ofrecall of years-old events,” the White House said.

Biden’s spokeswoman earlier Thursday referred questions about the report to the White House counsel’s office. Biden had previously suggested his aides were to blame for not doing a thorough job packing up his papers after he left government.

Former US President Barack Obama with his former vice president Joe Biden. Picture: AFP.

In a statement after the report was released, Mr Biden said the matter was no closed.

“I was pleased to see they reached the conclusion I believed all along they would reach – that there would be no charges brought in this case and the matter is now closed,” he said.

“This was an exhaustive investigation going back more than 40 years, even into the 1970s when I was a young senator. I cooperated completely, threw up no roadblocks, and sought no delays.

“In fact, I was so determined to give the Special Counsel what they needed that I went forward with five hours of in-person interviews over two days on October 8th and 9th of last year, even though Israel had just been attacked on October 7th and I was in the middle of handling an international crisis. I just believed that’s what I owed the American people so they could know no charges would be brought and the matter closed.”

Dow Jones