Special Counsel Robert Hur will ask Congress next month about President Biden’s “intentional retention and disclosure of classified material” after he released a scathing report that found the commander-in-chief’s “deteriorating memory.” I plan to testify.
Mr. Hsu, who Mr. Biden, 81, fired as a “Republican adviser,” is scheduled to appear for a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee on March 12, a person familiar with the matter told the Post.
After a year-long investigation, a former Maryland prosecutor turned himself in. 388 page report It outlines the president’s hoarding of U.S. military and foreign policy documents, as well as handwritten notes that “suggest confidential intelligence sources and methods.”
The classified files date from Mr. Biden’s first years as a senator to after he served two terms as vice president in the Obama administration.
At least a dozen were found to possess top secret information, and others disclosed confidential or sensitive information.
Biden had hidden documents and notebooks in cardboard boxes, some of which were turned over by his lawyers in November 2022 while cleaning out his former private office at the Penn Biden think tank in Washington, D.C.
The following month, the FBI seized other files from the president’s residence in Wilmington, Delaware, “surrounded by the remains of household effects.” Investigators also searched the president’s vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, leaving behind a note.
The report also notes that Mr. Biden disclosed the classified material three months after handing over the vice presidency to ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer, who told federal investigators that Mr. He admitted to deleting some of the audio files of the conversations after he became aware of the investigation. .
Mr. Biden, who was preparing his memoir to be published later that year, told Mr. Zwonitzer that he had “found all the classified information” but had kept it because he “didn’t want to submit it.”
But Mr. Xu declined to file criminal charges against the president, partly because he feared a federal jury would find him a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
When Biden was interrogated at the White House on Oct. 8 and 9, Xu’s investigators found that Biden “does not remember being vice president” and that “his son Beau took office.” I discovered that I don’t remember what happened even within a few years.” he died ”
Biden held a press conference on the day of the report’s release, lambasting Xu and calling his claims that he had intentionally kept classified documents “absolutely false.”
“I did not share classified information, I did not share it,” he told reporters.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) has since Ms. Zvonitzer asked. Turn over audio recordings and transcripts of conversations with the former Vice President to determine the accuracy of these claims.
Biden also told House Democrats at a conference in Leesburg, Virginia, earlier in the day about his case and that of Donald Trump, who was also indicted on more than 40 counts last year for possessing classified materials. He said there are “clear differences” in former President Trump’s case. .
On August 8, 2022, the FBI seized 102 classified documents from the former president’s Mar-a-Lago mansion for failing to submit them to the National Archives.
While Trump “obstructed justice by asking others to destroy evidence,” Biden emphasized that he “submitted classified documents to the National Archives.”
Asked about the issue in an interview last year, the president called the files “stray documents,” mocking Trump and wondering aloud, “How could someone be so irresponsible?” .
White House Counsel Richard Sauber also said in a statement that the final report contained “numerous inaccurate and inappropriate comments,” although he did not mention specific inaccuracies. denounced.
Mr. Hur, who was appointed by President Trump and whose confirmation as Maryland’s top prosecutor was celebrated in 2018 by Democratic senators from both states, was appointed by President Trump to clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist after graduating from law school. He also served as a government official.
He also considered accusations of ghostwriting Biden, but the evidence that Zwonitzer obstructed justice was “beyond a reasonable doubt that he intended to obstruct the investigation, and that the law shows that he intended to obstruct the investigation.” It concluded that this was insufficient to prove the “required intent.”
