He read from his notebooks that he (quite reasonably) believed to be his property, not documents that should have been handed to the National Archives.
Notebooks containing classified information taken from official meetings:
Mr. Biden warned Zwonitzer, "Some of this may be classified, so be careful," and added, "I'm not sure. It isn't marked classified, but .... "
This is not a reference to merely private material. In this context, when a former official of Mr. Biden's stature and experience warns someone without a security clearance to "be careful" because some information "may classified," and then refers to "marked classified" material, the former official is talking about classified national security information. The evidence shows that Mr. Biden knew his notebooks contained such information.
There is also evidence that Mr. Biden knew he could not keep classified handwritten notes unsecured at home after his time as vice president.
The material Biden retained wasn't limited to these notebooks, either:
Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen. These materials included (1) marked classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, and (2) notebooks containing Mr. Biden's handwritten entries about issues of national security and foreign policy implicating sensitive intelligence sources and methods.
FEBRUARY 16, 2017: "I JUST FOUND ALL THE CLASSIFIED STUFF DOWNSTAIRS"
During a recorded interview on February 16, 2017, at Mr. Biden's rental home in Virginia after the end of his vice presidency, Mr. Biden told Zwonitzer he had just found classified material downstairs.
From context, Mr. Biden appears to have been referring to classified documents relating to American military and foreign policy in Afghanistan.
Outright admission by Biden that he knew he had marked classified documents. Mr. Hur prognosticates that Biden's defense of willful retention is that he immediately suffered amnesia at this point before he could call up his lawyers:
Reasonable jurors could conclude that Mr. Biden discovered the Afghanistan documents in his Virginia home and then forgot about them almost immediately. Such jurors would likely acquit him.
Seems legit.
I’m not the one arguing against the conclusion of the special counsel who has all the information, guy.
Heck, the article tells you why things aren’t going down the way you want them to.
The information and reasons for the conclusion are all right there in the report for everyone to see. If there's information missing, that would be an omission on the part of the special counsel.
Let's review some more excerpts from the report:
Some evidence also suggests Mr. Biden knew he could not keep classified handwritten notes at home after leaving office. Mr. Biden, who had decades of experience with classified information, was deeply familiar with the measures taken to safeguard classified information and the need for those measures to prevent harm to national security. Asked about reports that former President Trump had kept classified documents at his own home, Mr. Biden wondered how "anyone could be that irresponsible" and voiced concern about "[w]hat data was in there that may compromise sources and methods." While vice president, he kept his notebooks in a White House safe for a time, in contrast with his decision after leaving office to keep them at home in unlocked drawers.
Biden knew that even handwritten notes needed to be stored securely. (The Biden quote is from a TV interview.)
In 2010, the Executive Secretary team raised concerns about the number of classified briefing books that Mr. Biden had not returned, and the fact that, even when they were returned, some of the content was missing. These concerns were raised with Hogan as well as Mr. Biden's personal aide and military aides. E-mails indicate that the Executive Secretary team alerted Hogan to the issue at least in June 2010, when nearly thirty of the classified briefing books from the first six months of 2010 were outstanding, and in August 2010, when Mr. Biden failed to return Top Secret, Sensitive Compartmented Information (also referred to as "codeword") contents of a classified briefing book that he had received during a trip to the Hamptons, in New York. We were unable to determine whether these materials were ever recovered, although they were likely found and disposed of by military aides or naval enlisted aides.
Biden mishandling shit in 2010.
Okay, so why didn't Hur recommend charges for Biden? A summary for Biden's possible defenses of reasonable doubt start on p204 (208 of the pdf):
Biden is allowed to have docs in his Delaware home in 2022 because he's president. Need to prove what specific docs were in Virginia home in 2017.
- First possible defense is that he found them in Virginia in 2017 but sudden amnesia.
- Second is that docs were never in Virginia, but placed by staff in Delaware and there the entire time.
- Third is that only some docs in Virginia, and those were no longer classified.
A point is made about the fact that docs were stored haphazardly in the garage lends credibility that Biden didn't know they were important. Mar-a-lago bathroom, anyone?
There's a point made that Biden wouldn't have let his home be searched if he knew he was illegally holding docs. Hur states, "While various parts of this argument are debatable, we expect the argument will carry real force for many reasonable jurors." Hur doesn't say what's debatable about that argument. I'll do it myself: It lets him plead ignorance without risking getting caught messing with the docs.
It also let Biden's attorneys conduct searches instead of the FBI. It also isn't technically illegal for him to have the docs at the time of search, only before he became president.
On the docs never having been in Virginia, the only point is that there is no direct evidence besides Biden mentioning it on tape. Impreciseness of "all the classified stuff downstairs". ("Classified stuff" is still classified material, isn't it? Still a crime if they're not marked but you know it, right? See: The first part of this post regarding notebooks.)
All of this leads Hur to conclude that a jury might find reasonable doubt that Biden didn't
willfully retain classified docs. But, wait. Isn't that up to the jury? Since when is it a prosecutor's job to determine reasonable doubt?
Lastly:
The practice of retaining classified material in unsecured locations poses serious risks to national security, given the vulnerability of extraordinarily sensitive information to loss or compromise to America's adversaries. The Department routinely highlights such risks when pursuing classified mishandling prosecutions. But addressing those risks through the criminal law, the only means available to this office, is not the proper remedy here.
For the classified Afghanistan documents and the classified notebooks, we believe the evidence falls short of supporting criminal charges. And other factors that inform our decision under the Principles of Federal Prosecution lead us to conclude that "the fundamental interests of society" do not "require" such charges. For these reasons, we decline prosecution.
"The fundamental interests of society do not require such charges."
Translation: Politics.
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