Biden Won't Be Charged in Top Secret Documents Case

Facts

• Due to his mishandling of sensitive documents, the actions of US Pres. Joe Biden after his US vice presidency ended posed a serious risk to national security, a federal probe has found. The investigation stated that, because of Biden's cooperation, besides the difficulties in charging him, criminal prosecution would be challenging.¹
• US Dept. of Justice special counsel Robert Hur's report suggested that Biden, 'would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him — by then a former president well into his eighties — of a serious felony.'²
• Hur further stated that any further prosecution may not be possible since the 81-year-old will only be seen as 'a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.'³
• The report said Biden forgot about the Afghanistan-related documents after they were found at his Virginia home. It also said the president even seemed to forget when his son, Beau Biden, had died.⁴
• Hur's 345-page report is based on more than a year-long probe. The investigators conducted 173 interviews with 147 witnesses, including Biden himself.⁵
• Biden vehemently disagreed with the report's characterization, yet inadvertently stoked further speculation by referring to Egyptian Pres. Abdel Fattah El-Sisi as 'President of Mexico.' Earlier this week, Biden also confused former German Chancellor Angela Merkel with Helmut Kohl.⁶

Sources: ¹Sky News (a), ²Associated Press, ³The Guardian, ⁴Forbes, ⁵BBC News and ⁶Sky News (b).

Narratives

• Republican narrative, as provided by BBC News. If anyone harbored doubts about Pres. Joe Biden's age-related inabilities, the special counsel's report, and the president's bumbling response to it must have cleared them all. Each time the Democratic party tries to deny it, Pres. Biden himself blows the lid open on his worst-kept secret. In any case, his age-related challenges are a 'secret' only to him and his party, and the rest of the nation has long known it. And yet, they want the nation to give him 'four more years.'
• Democratic narrative, as provided by Guardian. A political hatchet job was executed to perfection by a special counsel whose Beltway Republican credentials are well-known. Robert Hur has handed Donald Trump an easy line of attack against Joe Biden in the run-up to the 2024 US presidential election. And it couldn't have been more below the belt than pulling in the president's late son into the narrative of 'If too senile to be prosecuted, then too senile to be president.'