Biden GUILTY in Documents Case; Report Raises Concerns About His Memory

​BIDEN GUILTY IN DOCUMENTS CASE; REPORT RAISES CONCERNS ABOUT HIS MEMORY

WASHINGTON — President Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials,” special counsel Robert Hur found in a bombshell report released Thursday — though Hur recommended against criminal charges, in part because a jury might well 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, Del., 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.
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. 
When Biden sat for questions with Hur’s investigators Oct. 8 and Oct. 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.” A detailed image of the documents found in a box in Biden’s garage.DOJ
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 lapses of memory may have been useful for avoiding criminal liability, they are 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.