Special counsel report on Biden’s handling of classified docs released to Congress
Written by ABC AUDIO on February 9, 2024
(WASHINGTON) — Special counsel Robert Hur has released to members of Congress his report summarizing his yearlong probe into President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents while out of office.
It’s one of the final steps before the report is made public.
Earlier Thursday, the White House reviewed a draft of the report and said it would not seek to censor any information gathered by Hur.
Ian Sams, a spokesperson for the White House counsel’s office, said in a statement that the president’s legal team had completed a review of the report and that “in keeping with his commitment to cooperation and transparency,” the president would not assert executive privilege over any portion of the report.
Attorney General Merrick Garland earlier this week informed key lawmakers that Hur had concluded his investigation, which examined how approximately two dozen classified documents wound up at Biden’s personal home and office.
The records in question date back to Biden’s time as vice president, and at least some include “top secret” markings, the highest level of classification.
Garland appointed Hur as special counsel in January of 2023, after aides to the president discovered a batch of ten documents at the Penn-Biden Center in Washington, D.C., where Biden kept an office after his vice presidency.
A second discovery of additional records in the garage of Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home precipitated Garland’s decision to assign Hur as special counsel, ABC News reported at the time.
Investigators interviewed as many as 100 current and former officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, former White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, and Hunter Biden, the president’s son. In October, Hur’s team spent two days interviewing Biden himself.
ABC News previously reported that sources who were present for some of the interviews, including witnesses, said that authorities had apparently uncovered instances of carelessness from Biden’s vice presidency, but that — based on what was said in the interviews — the improper removal of classified documents from Biden’s office when he left the White House in 2017 seemed to be more likely a mistake than a criminal act.
The White House had emphasized from the beginning that it would cooperate with investigators. Biden himself repeatedly denied any personal wrongdoing and said he was “surprised” to learn of the documents’ existence.
The Hur investigation has played out quietly against the backdrop of special counsel Jack Smith’s inquiry into former President Donald Trump’s handling of classified records, which culminated last year in a 40-count indictment, to which Trump has pleaded not guilty.
Trump has sought to link his circumstances to Biden’s by trying to draw an equivalence between their conduct and calling his prosecution the result of a justice system improperly targeting Republicans.
But records subsequently released by the National Archives indicate that Biden’s legal team cooperated with National Archives officials, whereas federal prosecutors have accused Trump of deliberately withholding records he knew to be classified from investigators with the National Archives and, later, the FBI.
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