President Joe Biden and his aides will not face any charges as part of a special counsel investigation into his handling of classified documents, the Justice Department announced on Thursday.

Special counsel Robert Hur said in his report that while Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen, no criminal charges were warranted.

The president rejected those findings in a press briefing on Thursday, saying any claim he had willfully retained the papers was misleading and just plain wrong. He moved to cast the episode as far different than the documents found at former President Donald Trump s Mar-a-Lago resort.

It wasnt out there like in Mar-a-Lago, in a public place, Biden said. I wish I had paid more attention to how the documents were being moved. I thought it was being moved into the archives, I thought all of it was being moved.

They made a firm conclusion, he added. I did not break the law, period.

Thursdays release concludes a yearlong saga after the presidents aides informed the government they had found a small cache of classified documents at his home in Delaware and a former office. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Hur in January 2023, saying at the time the DOJ was committed to both independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters.

Among the documents Biden held were papers and artifacts related to significant issues and events in his career, including ones about U.S. policy in Afghanistan. Biden kept these records because he always believed history would prove him right on his opposition to escalating U.S. involvement there, Hur said.

These materials were proof of the stand Mr. Biden took in what he regarded as among the most important decisions of his vice presidency, Hur found.

Biden did not reveal any of this classified material in his 2017 memoir, but he did share some of the documents with his ghostwriter, the report noted.