President Biden addressed the nation Thursday night, saying his memory is ‘fine’ and defended his re-election campaign, saying he is the ‘most qualified person in this country to be president.’

Biden’s address to the nation from the White House Thursday night comes just hours after Special Counsel Robert Hur released his report, which did not recommend criminal charges against the president for mishandling classified documents. Those records included classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, among other records related to national security and foreign policy which Hur said implicated ‘sensitive intelligence sources and methods.’ 

Hur, though, described Biden as a ‘sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.’ Hur, throughout the more than 300-page report, said ‘it would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him’ of a serious felony ‘that requires a mental state of willfulness,’ and said he would be ‘well into his eighties.’ 

Biden, on Thursday night, said he agreed.

‘I’m well-meaning, and I’m an elderly man and I know what the hell I’m doing,’ Biden said. ‘I’ve been president. I put this country back on its feet. I don’t need his recommendation.’

Biden added: ‘My memory is fine.’

During his address, Biden also fired back at Special Counsel Robert Hur for suggesting he did not remember when his son Beau died.

‘How dare he raise that?’ Biden said. ‘Frankly, when I was asked a question, I thought to myself, what’s that any of your damn business?’

‘Let me tell you something…I swear, since the day he died, every single day…I wear the rosary he got from Our Lady—’ Biden stopped, seemingly forgetting where the rosary was from.

Biden became visibly emotional, and declared: ‘I don’t need anyone—I don’t need anyone to remind me when he passed away or passed away.’ 

Moments later, though, Biden transitioned to discuss the conflict in the Middle East. Biden referred to Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, the president of Egypt, as ‘the president of Mexico.’

But the president took a barrage of questions from the White House press corps, with some shouting and pressing him on whether he is fit to run for re-election. 

‘I’m the most qualified person in this country to be president of the United States,’ Biden said, adding that he has to ‘finish the job I started.’ 

Meanwhile, Hur, in the report, said Biden, during his interview with the special counsel’s team, could not remember key details, such as when he was vice president. 

‘In his interview with our office, Mr. Biden’s memory was worse,’ the report states. ‘He 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?’).’

‘He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died,’ the report continued. ‘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 memo to President Obama.’

‘In a case where the government must prove that Mr. Biden knew he had possession of the classified Afghanistan documents after the vice presidency and chose to keep those documents, knowing he was violating the law, we expect that at trial, his attorneys would emphasize these limitations in his recall,’ the report said.

As for Biden’s memory, prior to the release of the report, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Thursday defended Biden when asked about a gaffe in which the president said he spoke in 2021 with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl — who actually died four years earlier — arguing that misspeaking ‘happens to all of us, and it is common.’ 

That gaffe was similar to the one Biden made on Sunday when he claimed he spoke with François Mitterrand, a French president who died in 1996, at the same G7 meeting.

But Hur also said his investigation ‘uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.’

The materials included ‘marked classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, and notebooks containing Mr. Biden’s handwritten entries about issues of national security and foreign policy implicating sensitive intelligence sources and methods.’ 

Hur said FBI agents recovered the materials from ‘the garages, offices, and basement den in Mr. Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware home.’

But Biden fired back, citing sections in the report that stated he did not willfully retain the documents. Biden also said he was ‘especially pleased to see special counsel make clear the stark distinction in difference between this case and Mr. Trump’s case,’ saying he cooperated and sat for a five hour-long interview. 

Trump, on the other hand, was charged out of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation related to his retention of classified materials. Trump pleaded not guilty to all 37 felony charges out of Smith’s probe. The charges include willful retention of national defense information, conspiracy to obstruct justice and false statements.

Trump, the 2024 GOP front-runner, was then charged with an additional three counts as part of a superseding indictment out of Smith’s investigation — an additional count of willful retention of national defense information and two additional obstruction counts. Trump pleaded not guilty.

That trial is set to begin on May 20. 

‘They should immediately drop the case against me,’ Trump told Fox News Digital on Thursday. ‘I am covered by the Presidential Records Act — he wasn’t. He had many, many times more documents — totally unguarded. Mine were always surrounded by Secret Service and in locked rooms.’ 

‘Deranged Jack Smith should drop the case immediately against us.’ 

Trump added: ‘It is election interference…. I did absolutely nothing wrong.’ 

President Biden retained documents marked ‘secret’ and ‘confidential’ related to Ukraine and China, according to Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report.

Hur, who released his report to the public on Thursday after months of investigating, did not recommend criminal charges against Biden for mishandling and retaining classified documents — and stated that he wouldn’t bring charges against Biden even if he were not in the Oval Office. 

Those records included classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan and other countries, among other records related to national security and foreign policy, which Hur said implicated ‘sensitive intelligence sources and methods.’ 

But Biden also kept classified documents related to Ukraine and China.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., who is currently co-leading the impeachment inquiry against Biden, had asked Hur last year if any of the classified records Biden held were related to the countries that his family conducted business with.

Comer is now demanding ‘unfettered access to these documents to determine if President Biden’s retention of sensitive materials were used to help the Bidens’ influence peddling.’

Hunter Biden, joined the board of Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma Holdings in June 2014. Hunter Biden also had joint business ventures with Chinese energy firms.

With regard to the Ukraine documents, according to the special counsel report, Biden kept a September 2014 memo with the subject line ‘U.S. Energy Assistance to Ukraine.’ That memo was marked as confidential.

Biden, at the time, did run U.S.-Ukraine policy.

The report also states that the FBI located a green file folder Biden kept, labeled ‘Ukraine 2/19/15.’ That folder was inside an ‘unlabeled green hanging folder.’ Also, inside that folder was a red file folder labeled ‘VP Personal.’

In the ‘VP Personal’ file folder was a telephone call sheet from Dec. 12, 2015, and talking points for a call with Ukrainian Prime Minister Yatsenyuk. There is a handwritten note attached addressed to Biden’s executive assistant that states: ‘Get copy of this conversation from Sit Rm for my Records please.’ The note is signed ‘Joe.’ That document was marked as ‘Secret.’

Attached to that document was another, dated Dec. 11, 2015. The report describes that document as ‘a transcript documenting the substance of a Dec. 11, 2015 call between Mr. Biden and Ukrainian Prime Minister Yatsenyuk.’ The document is marked ‘CONFIDENTIAL’ and ‘EYES ONLY DO NOT COPY.’

The special counsel’s report analyzes the documents, saying there ‘is reasonable doubt that Mr. Biden willfully retained’ the documents.

‘Mr. Biden’s handwritten note does not request that executive assistant save the classified call sheet containing talking points for the call (A9) in his records; rather, he only requested the transcript of the phone call itself,’ the report states. ‘And no jury could reasonably find that the substance of the call between Mr. Biden and the Ukrainian Prime Minister was national defense information.’

The report states that Biden and the Ukrainian prime minister ‘exchanged pleasantries and the Prime Minister heaped praise upon Mr. Biden for his December 9, 2015 speech to Ukraine’s parliament.’

‘They did not engage in a substantive policy discussion. There may be technical or nuanced reasons to maintain the classification of the call, but no reasonable jury could conclude the call or its contents were national defense information after the end of Obama administration, or that by asking for a transcript of the call Biden intended to retain national defense information,’ the report states.

Biden, on Dec. 9, 2015, gave a speech in which he discussed corruption in Ukraine.

‘And it’s not enough to set up a new anti-corruption bureau and establish a special prosecutor fighting corruption,’ Biden said in the speech. ‘The Office of the General Prosecutor desperately needs reform.’

In that speech, Biden also said Ukraine’s ‘energy sector needs to be competitive, ruled by market principles — not sweetheart deals.’

‘It’s not enough to push through laws to increase transparency with regard to official sources of income,’ he said. ‘Senior elected officials have to remove all conflicts between their business interest and their government responsibilities.  Every other democracy in the world — that system pertains.’

At the time, Burisma Holdings was under investigation by Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin. Several months later, in March 2016, Biden successfully pressured Ukraine to remove Shokin. At the time Shokin was investigating Burisma Holdings, Hunter had a highly lucrative role on the board receiving tens of thousands of dollars per month.

Biden, at the time, threatened to withhold $1 billion of critical U.S. aid if Shokin was not fired.

‘I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in,’ I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’’ Biden recalled telling then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. Biden recollected the conversation during an event for the Council on Foreign Relations in 2018.

‘Well, son of a b—-, he got fired,’ Biden said during the event. ‘And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.’

Biden allies maintain the then-vice president pushed for Shokin’s firing due to concerns the Ukrainian prosecutor went easy on corruption, and say that his firing, at the time, was the policy position of the U.S. and international community.

But Comer blasted the discovery of this information as ‘concerning’ and questioned the timeline.

‘It’s no secret Hunter Biden made millions by sitting on the board of Burisma when Joe Biden was Vice President and that Burisma benefited from the firing of Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin,’ Comer told Fox News Digital, saying it is ‘concerning Joe Biden retained classified materials related to Ukraine around the same timeframe he called for the firing of Viktor Shokin.’

‘The Justice Department must provide Congress with unfettered access to these documents to determine if President Biden’s retention of sensitive materials were used to help the Bidens’ influencing peddling schemes,’ Comer said.

Meanwhile, with regard to China, Biden retained a memo with the subject, ‘Engagement with China in the Second Term.’ That document ‘suggests activities Vice President Biden could do in his second term to ‘build on my work last year by engaging with China’s leaders in the second term.’  The document was marked as confidential.

Comer’s investigation and the House impeachment inquiry is probing Hunter Biden and James Biden’s Chinese business dealings, and whether Joe Biden was involved or had knowledge of the ventures.

Former President Donald Trump can chalk up another victory in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

The Virgin Islands Republican Party on Thursday announced that Trump has won the GOP caucus in the island territory.

Four delegates to the summer’s GOP presidential nominating convention were up for grabs in the Virgin Islands contest, which was open only to Republican voters. 

‘Word just came that we overwhelmingly won the Virgin Islands Caucus, ALL Delegates, with almost 75% of the Vote. I have just called to thank those involved,’ Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform after the U.S. Virgin Islands GOP announced the results.

Trump and his last remaining major rival for the nomination – former U.N. ambassador and former two-term South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley – were on the ballot, as well as four other candidates who have dropped out of the 2024 race.

The caucus utilized ranked-choice voting. People casting a ballot ranked their choices, and if no candidate achieved a majority of the vote, the ranked choice process would have gone into effect.

Democratic presidential candidate Dean Phillips reacted to the release of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report related to President Biden’s handling of classified documents by saying that it ‘affirms’ his belief that Biden is not fit to be president.

‘It’s another sad day for America and particularly for President Biden and his family,’ Phillips told Fox News Digital. ‘While President Biden ‘willfully retained and disclosed classified materials,’ the Special Counsel elected not to prosecute him because a jury would likely not convict a ‘well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

Phillips continued, ‘The Report simply affirms what most Americans already know, that the President cannot continue to serve as our Commander-in-Chief beyond his term ending January 20, 2025. Already facing the lowest approval numbers in modern history and losing in each of the key battleground states, this Report has all but handed the 2024 election to Donald Trump if Joe Biden is the Democratic nominee — and I invite fellow Democrats to face the truth.’

Hur on Thursday announced he will not recommend criminal charges against President Biden for mishandling classified documents, according to his report, after a months-long investigation into the president’s alleged improper retention of classified records. 

Although the report stated that the special counsel ‘uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen,’ the report said it would be ‘difficult’ to secure a conviction based on Biden’s mental state. 

‘We have also considered that, at trial, 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,’ Hur wrote in the report. ‘Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone from whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It 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 that requires a mental state of willfulness.’

The report also outlined instances where Biden had a difficult time remembering key details and events, including when he served as vice president and the exact date his son, Beau, died. 

Several Republican lawmakers agreed with Phillips and concluded that the report is an example of Biden not having the mental fortitude to be president at 81 years of age.

‘New Biden defense for otherwise criminal conduct: he’s an old man incapable of remembering who he is, where he is, or what he’s done,’ Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., posted on X.

‘Biden doesn’t remember his time as VP?,’ Hawley wrote in another post. ‘But somehow he’s qualified to be President for another 4 years?’

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital. 

‘Bottom line is, a special counsel in my case decided against moving forward any charges, and this matter is now closed,’ Biden said Thursday after the report was released. ‘I’ll continue to do what I’ve always done — stay focused on my job like you do, of my job of being president.’

Fox News Digital’s Brooke Singman contributed to this report.

President Biden considered resigning as vice president ‘in protest’ over former President Barack Obama’s Afghanistan policies in 2009 over fear the war would become ‘another Vietnam,’ according to Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report on Biden’s mishandling of classified documents released Thursday.

Hur has been investigating Biden’s improper retention of classified records since last year. The papers included classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, among other national security and foreign policy records, which Hur said implicated ‘sensitive intelligence sources and methods.’ 

‘Tomorrow the President is going to make a fateful decision regarding Afghanistan – as I sat looking out the window at the sea – thinking I should resign in protest over what will bring his administration down,’ Biden wrote in what the report noted was an ‘Af/Pak’ notebook he used to take notes during a number of National Security Council meetings on Afghanistan in 2009.

‘Although I obviously wasn’t there I feel like this is what it must have felt like for Kennedy then Johnson in the early days of VTN [Vietnam]. I feel guilty and boxed in myself. Guilty for not having been more successful w/ the President – and staying. Boxed in by knowing or at least feeling that my resignation would only harden his position and leave him with one less voice,’ he added.

Biden strongly opposed the administration’s plans to send thousands more troops to Afghanistan throughout 2009, a view reflected in various entries in his notebook, as well as in a memo he sent Obama, that FBI agents found at his Delaware home alongside marked classified documents containing his advice to the former president.

According to the report, Biden called Army leaders’ request for another 40,000 troops in Afghanistan ‘f—ing outrageous,’ and privately fretted the decision to do so would be ‘disastrous.’

The reported later said Biden ‘had a strong motive to keep the classified Afghanistan documents,’ because of his belief the 2009 troop surge was a Vietnam-level mistake.

‘He wanted the record to show that he was right about Afghanistan; that his critics were wrong; and that he had opposed President Obama’s mistaken decision forcefully,’ it said.

‘There is evidence that, after his vice presidency, Mr. Biden willfully retained marked classified documents about Afghanistan and unmarked classified handwritten notes in his notebooks, both of which he stored in unsecured places in his home. He had no legal authority to do so, and his retention of these materials, and disclosure of classified information from his notebooks to his ghostwriter, risked serious damage to America’s national security,’ it added.

Fox News Digital has reached out to representatives of Obama for comment.

Hur announced he would not seek criminal charges against Biden.

Fox News’ Joe Schoffstall and Brooke Singman contributed to this report.

President Biden said Thursday that he struggled to remember certain key dates during his interviews with Special Counsel Robert Hur as a result of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

Biden told reporters that he was ‘handling an international crisis’ at the time of his interviews with federal investigators shortly after Hur released his 345-page report Thursday detailing the findings in his investigation into the president’s handling of classified documents. In the report, Hur noted that Biden’s memory failed him in multiple instances, saying the president forgot when he was vice president and when his son Beau died.

‘I sought no delays. In fact, I was so determined to get the special counsel what they needed,’ Biden remarked. ‘I went forward with a five-hour in-person interview over the two days of October — the ninth, eighth and ninth last year — even though Israel had just been attacked by Hamas on the seventh. I was in the middle of handling an international crisis.’

‘Bottom line is, a special counsel in my case decided against moving forward any charges, and this matter is now closed,’ the president continued. ‘I’ll continue to do what I’ve always done — stay focused on my job like you do, of my job of being president.’

Additionally, shortly after the report was published, Biden’s personal lawyers Richard Sauber and Bob Bauer penned a letter to Hur, criticizing him for his characterization of the president’s memory. The lawyers said the report’s language has ‘no place in a Department of Justice report.’

‘We do not believe that the report’s treatment of President Biden’s memory is accurate or appropriate,’ Sauber and Bauer wrote. ‘The report uses highly prejudicial language to describe a commonplace occurrence among witnesses: a lack of recall of years-old events.’

‘In fact there is ample evidence from your interview that the President did well in answering your questions about years-old events over the course of five hours,’ they added in the letter. ‘This is especially true under the circumstances, which you do not mention in your report that his interview began the day after the October 7 attacks on Israel.’

White House communications director Ben LaBolt reiterated Biden’s counsel in a post on X, again calling attention to the dates of the president’s interviews in the case.

In the report, Hur detailed how Biden forgot basic facts about his own personal history and his family, even referring to Biden as ‘a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.’ And the report states that a jury would have trouble convicting Biden of having committed a serious felony that ‘requires a mental state of willfulness.’

‘In his interview with our office, Mr. Biden’s memory was worse,’ the report states. ‘He 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?’).’

‘He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died,’ the report continued. ‘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 memo to President Obama.’

‘In a case where the government must prove that Mr. Biden knew he had possession of the classified Afghanistan documents after the vice presidency and chose to keep those documents, knowing he was violating the law, we expect that at trial, his attorneys would emphasize these limitations in his recall,’ the report said.

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Fox News Digital reporters Brooke Singman and Joe Schoffstall contributed to this report

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre defended President Biden on Thursday when asked about a gaffe in which the president said he spoke in 2021 with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl – who actually died four years earlier – arguing that misspeaking ‘happens to all of us, and it is common.’ 

Biden had made the remark on Wednesday while recalling past conversations during fundraising events. At his second and third events in New York, he told donors about conversations surrounding Jan. 6, 2021, at his first Group of Seven meeting as president, which took place in England in June of that year. 

Biden said Kohl asked him what he would say if he learned 1,000 people stormed the British Parliament in an attempt to deny the next prime minister from taking office. 

The annual meeting was not attended by Kohl, as he had been dead for four years, but by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The gaffe is similar to the one Biden made on Sunday after he claimed he spoke with François Mitterrand, a French president who died in 1996, at the same G-7 meeting. 

‘I want to just step back for a second and just kind of think really kind of top level of what the president was talking about when he tells a story about having these conversations with world leaders, which are obviously important conversations. He was underlying the Jan. 6 events in 2021, what happened,’ Jean-Pierre said Thursday when asked about the matter. ‘The message that it sent around the globe, around the world to our leaders, to world leaders, how dangerous it is, our democracy, how important democracy was and or is continues to be, obviously.’

‘As it relates to the names and what he was trying to say, many people, elected officials, many people, you know, they can misspeak sometimes, right?’ she added. 

Jean-Pierre then cited a handful of examples of what she said were mistakes by media and political figures.

‘And so this happens. You know, it happens to all of us and it is common,’ Jean-Pierre argued. ‘But I do want to make sure we don’t forget what the overall arching kind of theme, what he is trying to say about our leadership on the global stage.’ 

Fox News’ Elizabeth Pritchett contributed to this report. 

Special Counsel Robert Hur described President Biden as a ‘sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,’ and said he would bring no criminal charges against the president after a months-long investigation into his improper retention of classified documents related to national security. 

Hur’s report was made public Thursday afternoon. 

Hur has been investigating Biden’s improper retention of classified records since last year. Those records included classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, among other records related to national security and foreign policy which Hur said implicated ‘sensitive intelligence sources and methods.’ 

‘We conclude that no criminal charges are warranted in this matter,’ the report states. ‘We would reach the same conclusion even if the Department of Justice policy did not foreclose criminal charges against a sitting president.’

But Hur, in the report, said the special counsel’s team ‘also considered that, at trial, 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.’ 

‘Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone from whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt,’ the report states. ‘It 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 that requires a mental state of willfulness.’

Biden’s ‘memory also appeared to have significant limitations’ according to the report, and during conversations with his ghostwriter, recorded in 2017, his conversations were ‘painfully slow, with Mr. Biden struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries’

Hur’s report pointed out that Biden’s memory was ‘worse’ during an interview with the Special Counsel’s office.

During the interview, 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?’)’ 

‘He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died. 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. Eiden cited approvingly in his Thanksgiving memo to President Obama,’ Hur’s report said.

Biden is 81. 

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates. 

Special Counsel Robert Hur will not recommend criminal charges against President Biden for mishandling classified documents, according to his report after a months-long investigation into the president’s alleged improper retention of classified records. 

Hur has been investigating Biden’s improper retention of classified records since last year. Those records included classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, among other records related to national security and foreign policy which Hur said implicated ‘sensitive intelligence sources and methods.’ 

‘We conclude that no criminal charges are warranted in this matter,’ the report states. ‘We would reach the same conclusion even if the Department of Justice policy did not foreclose criminal charges against a sitting president.’

The special counsel also described Biden as ‘a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.’ 

‘We have also considered that, at trial, 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,’ Hur wrote in the report. ‘Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone from whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It 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 that requires a mental state of willfulness.’

But Hur said his investigation ‘uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.’

The materials included ‘marked classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, and notebooks containing Mr. Biden’s handwritten entries about issues of national security and foreign policy implicating sensitive intelligence sources and methods.’ 

Hur said FBI agents recovered the materials from ‘the garages, offices, and basement den in Mr. Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware home.’ 

But Hur said that the evidence ‘does not establish Mr. Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.’ :

‘Prosecution of Mr. Biden is also unwarranted based on our consideration of the aggravating and mitigating factors set forth in the Department of Justice’s Principles of Federal Prosecution,’ the report states. ‘For these reasons, we decline prosecution of Mr. Biden.’

The White House was given the opportunity to review the report for privilege after Hur initially submitted his report on Feb. 5, and did not seek any redaction to the report. The report was transmitted to Congress Thursday afternoon. 

Damning photos were included in the report — photos that the Biden campaign reportedly feared could have a negative impact on his 2024 re-election bid. 

Classified records were first found inside the Washington, D.C., offices of the Penn Biden Center think tank on Nov. 2, 2022, but only disclosed to the public in early January 2023.

A second stash of classified documents was also found inside the garage of the president’s home in Wilmington in December, but revealed to the public earlier this month, prompting Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint former U.S. Attorney Rob Hur to serve as special counsel.

Days later, additional classified documents were found in the president’s home in Delaware. The FBI conducted a more than 12-hour search of Biden’s Delaware home Friday, seizing additional classified records.

Biden has defended the storing of classified documents in the past.

‘By the way, my Corvette is in a locked garage, so it’s not like they’re sitting out on the street,’ he once said.

In a statement after Special Counsel released the report, Biden said he 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.’

‘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,’ Biden’s statement continued.

‘Over my career in public service, I have always worked to protect America’s security. I take these issues seriously and no one has ever questioned that,’ he added.

But Garland, on Nov. 18, 2022, appointed former DOJ official Jack Smith to serve as special counsel to investigate whether Trump was improperly retaining classified records at Mar-a-Lago.

When Smith was appointed to investigate Trump, Garland and top DOJ officials were simultaneously conducting an internal review of President Biden’s mishandling of classified records. That review, and the discovery of classified records at Biden’s office, was not disclosed to the public until January.

Republicans and allies of former President Trump were outraged, blasting the Justice Department for a double standard.

Trump pleaded not guilty to all 37 felony charges out of Smith’s probe. The charges include willful retention of national defense information, conspiracy to obstruct justice and false statements.

Trump, the 2024 GOP front-runner, was then charged with an additional three counts as part of a superseding indictment out of Smith’s investigation – an additional count of willful retention of national defense information and two additional obstruction counts. Trump pleaded not guilty.

That trial is set to begin on May 20, 2024. 

Biden’s aides told Axios earlier this week that they are fearful former President Trump’s campaign could use the photos against the Democrat incumbent ahead of their likely 2024 rematch.

Anthony Coley, a former senior adviser to Garland, accused the Biden team of slow-walking discovery in the president’s classified records case, versus the handling of the Trump probe.

‘Against the backdrop of former President Trump’s indictment on charges of willful and deliberate retention of classified documents, the Biden team’s drip, drip, drip of information made the discoveries seem even worse,’ he wrote in an op-ed.

Before Hur’s findings were released, reports suggested the Biden campaign was concerned about potentially embarrassing photos included in Hur’s expected report that could be released as soon as this week.

The campaign was concerned that the images would show how Biden stored classified materials. The classified documents were carried over from Biden’s time as former President Obama’s vice president.

Hur interviewed Biden at the White House – an interview that lasted two days. The White House said the president’s interview with Hur was ‘voluntary.’

Last year, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, who is co-leading the impeachment inquiry against President Biden, began investigating whether the sensitive, classified documents Biden retained involved specific countries or individuals that had financial dealings with Biden family members or their related companies. 

Comer questioned why Biden would have kept certain classified materials and asked Hur to provide his committee with a list of the countries named in any documents with classification markings recovered from Penn Biden Center, Biden’s residence, including the garage, in Wilmington, Delaware, or elsewhere; and a list of all individuals named in those documents with classification markings; and all documents found with classified markings.

It is unclear if Hur cooperated with Comer’s request.