Whereas both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump have faced allegations of mishandling classified documents, only the latter has faced criminal charges as a result.

Former Justice Department special counsel Robert Hur concluded after investigating the claims against Biden that a jury would be unlikely to convict due to the president’s status as an “elderly man with a poor memory.”

Hur appeared before the House Judiciary Committee earlier this week and received criticism from both sides of the aisle. In the end, his testimony made it clear that the decision not to indict Biden was not an exoneration.

Hur just confirmed that Biden had documents marked classified from when he was a senator. Some of those documents reportedly came from a secure SCIF, which would likely require Biden himself to remove them.

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) March 12, 2024

The confirmation that Biden’s actions, notwithstanding his age-related cognitive decline, seemed to warrant criminal charges, a number of prominent figures began to question aloud why he did not receive the same treatment as Trump.

One such source happened to be Judge Aileen Cannon, who is overseeing the Florida case against the former president. In response to multiple motions from Trump’s legal team to dismiss the charges against him, Cannon addressed the Hur report directly. She questioned prosecutors about the differences between Trump’s case and those of both Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence, each of whom were also accused of mishandling classified documents but never charged. 

Prosecutor Jay Bratt attempted to draw a broad distinction regarding Trump’s alleged behavior, insisting: “Even with other former presidents, there was never a situation remotely similar to this one.”

Special counsel Jack Smith has also sought to place the Trump case in a category of its own, claiming that the former president, “unlike Biden, is alleged to have engaged in extensive and repeated efforts to obstruct justice and thwart the return of documents bearing classification markings.”

Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA), a member of the judiciary panel who questioned Hur during Tuesday’s congressional hearing, voiced his own concerns regarding an apparent double standard.

“The fact that the only person being prosecuted for this offense happens to be the president’s political opponent makes this an unprecedented assault on our democracy,” he declared.

For his part, Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) opened the hearing with a denunciation of the decision to not indict the president.

“Joe Biden broke the law,” he said. “But because he’s a forgetful old man who would appear sympathetic to a jury, Mr. Hur chose not to bring charges.”