Special counsel says Joe Biden ‘wilfully’ held on to classified material

President Joe Biden “wilfully” held on to classified materials that were discovered at his home in Delaware and the office of a think tank in Washington DC, but should not face criminal charges for doing so, a special prosecutor appointed by the attorney general found in a report released on Thursday.

The special counsel, former Trump appointee and ex-Maryland US Attorney Robert Hur, did not recommend that Mr Biden face criminal charges, citing what he described as significant “mitigating factors” which led him to state that charges were not warranted and would not have been warranted even if Mr Biden were not president and barred from being prosecuted by Department of Justice policy.

The Republican prosecutor also noted that Mr Biden’s memory about the documents was “significantly limited” during his interviews with investigators, and he justified his decision by stating that there was not enough evidence to convince a jury that Mr Biden had wilfully retained the materials beyond a reasonable doubt, in part because the president had cooperated extensively with the probe.

“His cooperation with our investigation, including by reporting to the government that the Afghanistan documents were in his Delaware garage, will likely convince some jurors that he made an innocent mistake, rather than acting willfully-that is, with intent to break the law-as the statute requires,” he said.

But even as he declined to prosecute the president and reported that there was not enough evidence to justify charges or convince a jury of his guilt, the Republican prosector took a rhetorical swipes at the 81-year-old president, describing him in one passage of the report as someone who would appear to jurors as a “well-meaning, elderly man with