Special Counsel Hur's Report Described Biden as an 'Elderly Man With Poor Memory'

A Special Counsel’s report prepared for the Attorney General (by Special Counsel Robert K. Hur) regarding Joe Biden’s potential mishandling of confidential documents, contained a passage which described Joe Biden as an ‘elderly man with poor memory’. This description was one reason used to explain why charges would not be brought against him in a jury trial.

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. Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for 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.

We conclude the evidence is not sufficient to convict, and we decline to recommend prosecution of Mr. Biden for his retention of the classified Afghanistan documents.