Special counsel Robert Hur announced that the Department of Justice would not be pressing charges against President Joe Biden for retaining classified documents after his vice presidency but the conservative jurist got in a few digs on Bidens mental acuity and age in the process.

In a report completed on Monday, but released to the public on Thursday, Hur, a former U.S. attorney appointed by Donald Trump , cited Bidens significantly limited memory in his explanation of why he was not indicting the 81-year-old president.

Mr. Bidens memory was significantly limited, both during his recorded interviews with the ghostwriter in 2017, and in his interview with our office in 2023, Hur wrote. And 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.

Hur also said that Bidens advanced age at a trial that would not take place for years would make him more sympathetic to a potential jury, dimming the chances of a conviction.

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, Hur wrote. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him by then a former president well into his 80s of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.

Hurs comments about Bidens age and mental acuity are likely to become fodder for political attacks by former President Donald Trump, the prohibitive favorite for the Republican presidential nomination. Trump, 77, has seized on Bidens verbal gaffes to argue that hes too old to serve as president.

Biden addressed those assertions during a briefing on Thursday, telling reporters his memory was fine and angrily rejecting claims that he willfully retained any documents.

The documents were in a filing cabinet in my house, Biden said, It wasnt out there like in Mar-a-Lago, in a public place. 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 of the special counsel. I did not break the law, period.

The president was particularly frustrated by a claim in Hurs report that he couldnt remember when his son died.

How in the hell dare he raise that, he added.

Bidens attorneys registered their objections to Hurs characterization of Biden in a written response appended to Hurs report.

We do not believe that the reports treatment of President Bidens memory is accurate or appropriate, wrote Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president, and Bob Bauer, personal counsel to Biden. The report uses highly prejudicial language to describe a commonplace occurrence among witnesses: a lack of recall of years-old events.

Sauber and Bauer elaborate on their complaint, arguing that given Hurs conclusion that there is insufficient evidence of Bidens guilt to merit criminal charges, it is entirely superfluous to opine on how a jury would react to his age and bearing. They also accuse Hur of holding Biden to a higher standard than other witnesses in the investigation who likewise had trouble remembering the events in question.

The Presidents inability to recall dates or details of events that happened years ago is neither surprising nor unusual, especially given that many questions asked him to recall the particulars of staff work to pack, ship, and store materials and furniture in the course of moves between residences, Sauber and Bauer wrote. The same predictable memory loss occurred with other witnesses in this investigation. Yet unlike your treatment of President Biden, your report accepts other witnesses memory loss as completely understandable given the passage of time.