Hur was named Special Counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland last year after Biden's attorneys alerted the government about the president's ownership of secret records from his time as a senator and vice president. Hur came to the conclusion that Biden "willfully kept" the sensitive information.
Hur's assessment paints a harsh picture of Biden's memory, saying that it "looked to have considerable limits" at one time. The article presents an unfavorable account of an audio recording from 2017 with Mark Zwonitzer, who assisted Biden in writing two memoirs:
As to Hur's study, if Biden faced criminal charges, a jury would probably see him favorably because of the aforementioned limitations:
In his interview with our office, Mr. Biden’s memory was worse. 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. 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.
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.
