CNN’s fact checker spent four minutes on Friday correcting multiple statements from President Biden on his handling of classified information, calling some of them “just not true.”
Biden made the questionable statements late Thursday night during a press conference addressing Special Counsel Robert Hur’s final report on his criminal investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents.
CNN fact checker Daniel Dale took the president to task on several statements, including Biden’s claim that he had stored all the documents in question in filing cabinets that could be locked.
“Just not true, John,” Dale told anchor John Berman.
The special counsel’s report includes photos of a box “just sitting” in Biden’s Delaware garage, Dale said, adding that the special counsel had described it as a “badly damaged box sitting amid household detritus.”
“So there was some material that was in cabinets, locked or lockable, as the president said, but all of it, certainly not, and that open, unsealed, damaged box included, according to the special counsel, highly sensitive, top secret material about the war in Afghanistan,” Dale said.
Biden also told the press on Thursday that “none of it was high classified, didn’t have any of that red stuff on it, you know what I mean, around the corners? None of that.”
Dale said that claim is “also not true,” noting that the special counsel said Biden had “multiple highly classified documents that were indeed marked as being highly classified documents, including some marked as ‘TOP SECRET/SCI,’ sensitive compartmented information.”
“That is a very high level of classification,” Dale added.
Two top secret documents about Afghanistan were in the damaged, open box in Biden’s garage, according to the special counsel — one with “highly sensitive info about military programs” and another with “info about sensitive intelligence sources and methods,” Dale said.
“Now it’s not clear, John, if any of those Biden documents had those colored borders we saw on classified docs that former president Trump had, which I think is what President Biden was referring to when he talked about ‘red around the corners.’ But still, whatever coloring these documents had, the special counsel says they were clearly marked as highly classified,” Dale said.
Biden was also storing handwritten notes that he took during his vice presidency, which also contained highly classified information. According to the special counsel, at least seven excerpts from the handwritten notes included information on human intelligence sources.
The special counsel also said Biden read classified information from his handwritten notes to his ghostwriter on at least three occasions, including notes from meetings in the Situation Room.
During his press conference, however, Biden claimed the special counsel did not say that.
“So he’s entitled to say he didn’t do it,” Dale said on CNN. “He can defend himself. But … declaring the special counsel just did not say what he said, John, is not a factual defense.”
Hur’s report, which was released earlier on Thursday, concluded that Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials,” but said the president should not be charged.
However, one of the reasons the special counsel recommended not charging Biden was because the president exhibited memory issues, including forgetting when his son Beau had died or when his term as vice president in the Obama administration had started and ended. Hur concluded that a jury would view Biden as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
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