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Biden and Trump: How the two classified documents investigations came to different endings

Biden and Trump: How the two classified documents investigations came to different endings
*** Special counsel releasing *** scathing report Thursday that found President Joe Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified military and national security information but said charges would not be filed, saying they were unwarranted even if Justice Department policy didn't preclude charges against *** sitting president. President Biden holding *** last minute primetime address Thursday night to discuss the report. The special counsel acknowledged I cooperated completely. I did not throw up any roadblocks. The 345 page report comes after *** 15 month long investigation into his mishandling of classified documents following his time as vice president under President Barack Obama. Photos released by the Department of Justice show classified documents stashed under printers at an office in his Delaware home. Others in boxes in *** garage. The pictures of these documents taken between December of 2022 and January of 2023 before being seized by the DOJ. The White House pushing back on what it called inaccurate and inappropriate comments in the report. Including *** reference that Biden would likely present himself to *** jury as sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with *** poor memory. Special Counsel Robert Herr writing Biden did not remember when he was vice president or when his son Beau died. These assertions are not only misleading, they're just plain wrong. When asked about his memory, he fired back at. Reporters, my memory is fine. He focused on the fact that charges weren't filed against him, unlike former President Donald Trump, who is facing multiple criminal charges related to his handling of classified documents. Republicans quick to react. The special counsel's observation was pretty stunning. It's unnerving that the world can see this. I'm Jen Sullivan reporting.
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Biden and Trump: How the two classified documents investigations came to different endings
Classified documents were found in a damaged cardboard box in President Joe Biden's cluttered Delaware garage, near where golf clubs hung on the wall. A photo in former President Donald Trump's indictment, meanwhile, shows stacks of boxes filled with documents under a chandelier in an ornate Mar-a-Lago bathroom.In Biden's case, special counsel Robert Hur, a former U.S. attorney for Maryland nominated by Trump, concluded in a report released Thursday that the president should not face criminal charges, despite finding evidence that Biden willfully retained classified information. Trump, on the other hand, is scheduled to stand trial on charges alleging he hoarded classified documents at his Florida estate and thwarted government efforts to get them back.Trump, who has denied any wrongdoing in the case brought by special counsel Jack Smith, slammed the decision not to charge Biden, saying: "THIS IS A TWO-TIERED SYSTEM OF JUSTICE!" Biden, late Thursday, angrily lashed out at Hur for unflattering characterizations of his memory in the report and said he never shared classified information.A look at the similarities and differences between the Biden and Trump investigations:What kinds of documents are we talking about?BIDEN: FBI agents found classified documents about Afghanistan in Biden's Delaware garage in 2022, along with drafts of a handwritten memo Biden sent to President Barack Obama to persuade Obama not to send more troops into the country, Hur's report said.In an office and basement den in the Delaware home, agents also found notebooks with classified information that Biden wrote on during briefings with Obama and in White House Situation Room meetings, the report said. Investigators said the notebooks included national security and foreign policy information that touched on "sensitive intelligence sources and methods." Hur found that on at least three occasions during interviews with his ghostwriter, Biden read aloud from classified parts from his notebooks "nearly verbatim."TRUMP: Prosecutors have alleged that Trump stored hundreds of classified documents in boxes as he packed to leave the White House in 2021. After a Trump attorney told the FBI that there were no more classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, the FBI searched the property in August 2022 and found more than 100 documents with classified markings, according to his indictment. Each of the 32 counts of willful retention of national defense information Trump is charged with pertains to a specific classified document found at Mar-a-Lago that were marked "SECRET" or "TOP SECRET." Topics addressed in the documents include details about U.S. nuclear weapons and the nuclear capabilities of a foreign country.Why did Hur not charge Biden?Hur concluded there is not enough evidence to convict Biden of "willfully" retaining the Afghanistan documents or the notebooks. When the Afghanistan documents were found in the garage in 2022, Biden was allowed to have them because he was president at the time, the report said. To bring charges, Hur said prosecutors would have to rely on a comment that Biden had made to his ghostwriter in 2017 바카라 게임 웹사이트 when Biden was a private citizen and living in Virginia 바카라 게임 웹사이트 that he had "just found" classified documents downstairs.But Hur said Biden could convince some jurors his actions weren't willful by arguing, for example, that he forgot about the documents shortly after finding them in 2017. It's also possible the Afghanistan documents were never in the Virginia home at all, but were accidentally kept without Biden's knowledge in Delaware since he was vice president, Hur concluded.Hur also cited limitations with Biden바카라 게임 웹사이트s memory and the president's cooperation with investigators that "could convince some jurors that he made an innocent mistake." The report described the president as "someone for whom jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt.""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," the report said. "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."Regarding the notebooks containing classified information, Hur concluded that Biden could plausibly argue if there were a trial that he believed that the notebooks were his personal property and he was allowed to take them home."During our interview of him, Mr. Biden was emphatic, declaring that his notebooks are 바카라 게임 웹사이트my property바카라 게임 웹사이트 and that 바카라 게임 웹사이트every president before me has done the exact same thing,바카라 게임 웹사이트 that is, kept handwritten classified materials after leaving office," the report said.Other classified documents found at the Penn Biden Center, Biden's Delaware home, and among Senate papers at the University of Delaware "could plausibly have been brought to these locations by mistake," Hur concluded.What have prosecutors said in Trump's case?Trump is accused of not only hoarding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, but trying to hide them from investigators and working to block the government from clawing them back. Prosecutors have alleged that Trump showed off the documents to people who did not have security clearances to review them and enlisted others to help him hide records demanded by authorities.Hur's report says the differences between the two cases are "clear." Unlike Biden 바카라 게임 웹사이트 who cooperated with investigators, agreed to searches of his homes and sat for a voluntary interview 바카라 게임 웹사이트 the allegations in Trump's case present "serious aggravating facts," Hur wrote."Most notably, after being given multiple chances to return classified documents and avoid prosecution, Mr. Trump allegedly did the opposite," the report said.For instance, prosecutors say, after the Justice Department issued a subpoena for the records in May 2022, Trump asked his own lawyers if he could defy the request and said words to the effect of, "I don't want anybody looking through my boxes.""Wouldn't it be better if we just told them we don't have anything here?" one of his lawyers described him as saying, according to the indictment.Prosecutors allege that during the July 2021 meeting at Bedminster, Trump also waved around the classified attack plan to his guests. "This is secret information," he said, according to a recording prosecutors have cited, claiming that, "as president I could have declassified it" but hadn't.Prosecutors have also accused Trump of scheming with his valet, Walt Nauta, and a Mar-a-Lago property manager, Carlos De Oliveira, to try to conceal security camera footage from investigators after they issued a subpoena for it. Video from the property would ultimately play a significant role in the investigation because, prosecutors said, it captured Nauta moving boxes of documents in and out of a storage room 바카라 게임 웹사이트 including a day before an FBI visit to the property. The boxes were moved at Trump바카라 게임 웹사이트s direction, the indictment alleges.

Classified documents were found in a damaged cardboard box in President Joe Biden's cluttered Delaware garage, near where golf clubs hung on the wall. A photo in former President Donald Trump's indictment, meanwhile, shows stacks of boxes filled with documents under a chandelier in an ornate Mar-a-Lago bathroom.

In Biden's case, special counsel Robert Hur, a former U.S. attorney for Maryland nominated by Trump, concluded in a report released Thursday that the president should not face criminal charges, despite finding evidence that Biden willfully retained classified information. Trump, on the other hand, is scheduled to stand trial on charges alleging he hoarded classified documents at his Florida estate and thwarted government efforts to get them back.

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Trump, who has denied any wrongdoing in the case brought by special counsel Jack Smith, slammed the decision not to charge Biden, saying: "THIS IS A TWO-TIERED SYSTEM OF JUSTICE!" Biden, late Thursday, angrily lashed out at Hur for unflattering characterizations of his memory in the report and said he never shared classified information.

A look at the similarities and differences between the Biden and Trump investigations:

What kinds of documents are we talking about?

BIDEN: FBI agents found classified documents about Afghanistan in Biden's Delaware garage in 2022, along with drafts of a handwritten memo Biden sent to President Barack Obama to persuade Obama not to send more troops into the country, Hur's report said.

In an office and basement den in the Delaware home, agents also found notebooks with classified information that Biden wrote on during briefings with Obama and in White House Situation Room meetings, the report said. Investigators said the notebooks included national security and foreign policy information that touched on "sensitive intelligence sources and methods." Hur found that on at least three occasions during interviews with his ghostwriter, Biden read aloud from classified parts from his notebooks "nearly verbatim."

TRUMP: Prosecutors have alleged that Trump stored hundreds of classified documents in boxes as he packed to leave the White House in 2021. After a Trump attorney told the FBI that there were no more classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, the FBI searched the property in August 2022 and found more than 100 documents with classified markings, according to his indictment. Each of the 32 counts of willful retention of national defense information Trump is charged with pertains to a specific classified document found at Mar-a-Lago that were marked "SECRET" or "TOP SECRET." Topics addressed in the documents include details about U.S. nuclear weapons and the nuclear capabilities of a foreign country.

Why did Hur not charge Biden?

Hur concluded there is not enough evidence to convict Biden of "willfully" retaining the Afghanistan documents or the notebooks. When the Afghanistan documents were found in the garage in 2022, Biden was allowed to have them because he was president at the time, the report said. To bring charges, Hur said prosecutors would have to rely on a comment that Biden had made to his ghostwriter in 2017 바카라 게임 웹사이트 when Biden was a private citizen and living in Virginia 바카라 게임 웹사이트 that he had "just found" classified documents downstairs.

But Hur said Biden could convince some jurors his actions weren't willful by arguing, for example, that he forgot about the documents shortly after finding them in 2017. It's also possible the Afghanistan documents were never in the Virginia home at all, but were accidentally kept without Biden's knowledge in Delaware since he was vice president, Hur concluded.

Hur also cited limitations with Biden바카라 게임 웹사이트s memory and the president's cooperation with investigators that "could convince some jurors that he made an innocent mistake." The report described the president as "someone for whom jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt."

"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," the report said. "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."

Regarding the notebooks containing classified information, Hur concluded that Biden could plausibly argue if there were a trial that he believed that the notebooks were his personal property and he was allowed to take them home.

"During our interview of him, Mr. Biden was emphatic, declaring that his notebooks are 바카라 게임 웹사이트my property바카라 게임 웹사이트 and that 바카라 게임 웹사이트every president before me has done the exact same thing,바카라 게임 웹사이트 that is, kept handwritten classified materials after leaving office," the report said.

Other classified documents found at the Penn Biden Center, Biden's Delaware home, and among Senate papers at the University of Delaware "could plausibly have been brought to these locations by mistake," Hur concluded.

What have prosecutors said in Trump's case?

Trump is accused of not only hoarding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, but trying to hide them from investigators and working to block the government from clawing them back. Prosecutors have alleged that Trump showed off the documents to people who did not have security clearances to review them and enlisted others to help him hide records demanded by authorities.

Hur's report says the differences between the two cases are "clear." Unlike Biden 바카라 게임 웹사이트 who cooperated with investigators, agreed to searches of his homes and sat for a voluntary interview 바카라 게임 웹사이트 the allegations in Trump's case present "serious aggravating facts," Hur wrote.

"Most notably, after being given multiple chances to return classified documents and avoid prosecution, Mr. Trump allegedly did the opposite," the report said.

For instance, prosecutors say, after the Justice Department issued a subpoena for the records in May 2022, Trump asked his own lawyers if he could defy the request and said words to the effect of, "I don't want anybody looking through my boxes."

"Wouldn't it be better if we just told them we don't have anything here?" one of his lawyers described him as saying, according to the indictment.

Prosecutors allege that during the July 2021 meeting at Bedminster, Trump also waved around the classified attack plan to his guests. "This is secret information," he said, according to a recording prosecutors have cited, claiming that, "as president I could have declassified it" but hadn't.

Prosecutors have also accused Trump of scheming with his valet, Walt Nauta, and a Mar-a-Lago property manager, Carlos De Oliveira, to try to conceal security camera footage from investigators after they issued a subpoena for it. Video from the property would ultimately play a significant role in the investigation because, prosecutors said, it captured Nauta moving boxes of documents in and out of a storage room 바카라 게임 웹사이트 including a day before an FBI visit to the property. The boxes were moved at Trump바카라 게임 웹사이트s direction, the indictment alleges.