President Joe Biden says he never meant to keep classified documents. Robert Hur stands by his report on the president's memory.

  • Bias Rating

    10% Center

  • Reliability

    75% ReliableGood

  • Policy Leaning

    6% Center

  • Politician Portrayal

    N/A

Bias Score Analysis

The A.I. bias rating includes policy and politician portrayal leanings based on the author’s tone found in the article using machine learning. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral.

Sentiments

Overall Sentiment

20% Positive

  •   Liberal
  •   Conservative
SentenceSentimentBias
"The need to show my work was especially strong here, he said."
Positive
34% Conservative
"Before the redactions, the transcript had been classified as top secret and barred from dissemination to foreign nationals."
Positive
6% Conservative
"Democrats will try to paint Hur, whom Donald Trump appointed a U.S. attorney, as a political partisan out to help his party win a presidential election."
Negative
-40% Liberal
"Biden and Trump: How the two classified documents investigations came to different endingsWhile Biden fumbled some details in his interview, the full transcript could raise questions about Hur's depiction of the 81-year-old president as having significant limitations on his memory."
Negative
-80% Liberal
"Biden, by his own admission, has retained such a sprawling assortment of photos, documents and artifacts from his more than 50 years in public life that he can't keep track of everything."
Positive
16% Conservative
"Hur asked Biden about where he kept the things that he was actively working on while he was living in a rental home in Virginia immediately after leaving the vice presidency in January 2017."
Positive
4% Conservative
"Hur's report cited evidence that Biden willfully held on to highly classified information and shared it with a ghostwriter, based on audio of the conversations between the two men in which Biden said he had just come across some classified documents at his home."
Positive
2% Conservative
"Hur's report cited evidence that Biden willfully held on to highly classified information and shared it with a ghostwriter, based on audio of the conversations between the two men in which Biden said he had just come across some classified documents at his home."
Positive
2% Conservative
"Biden said that he left it to his staff to safeguard classified information that was presented to him, often leaving papers on his desk in heaps for aides to sort through and secure."
Positive
0% Conservative
"Biden mused, adding, Oh God, May 30th."
Negative
-4% Liberal
"Over five hours of interviews, President Joe Biden repeatedly told a special counsel that he never meant to retain classified information after he left the vice presidency, but he was at times fuzzy about dates and said he was unfamiliar with the paper trail for some of the sensitive documents he handled."
Negative
-8% Liberal
"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, Hur wrote in his report. READ MORE: FBI searched President Biden's former office at Pe Biden Center in November"
Negative
-8% Liberal
"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, Hur wrote in his report. READ MORE: FBI searched President Biden's former office at Pe Biden Center in November"
Negative
-8% Liberal
"Biden insisted were his own property, a claim also asserted by previous presidents and vice presidents, and that he had a right to keep them."
Negative
-8% Liberal
"At multiple points, when Hur suggested a pause, Biden encouraged prosecutors to keep going, saying, I'll go all night if we get this done."
Negative
-10% Liberal
"I never asked anybody, Biden said."
Negative
-10% Liberal
"The Associated Press reviewed a transcript of the Biden interviews, which were being turned over to Congress by the Justice Department on Tuesday just hours before the special counsel, Robert Hur, was going before the House Judiciary Committee to face questions about his investigation of Biden.Hur, in his report, concluded that Biden should not face criminal charges over his mishandling of documents but also impugned the president's age and competence."
Negative
-12% Liberal
"The Associated Press reviewed a transcript of the Biden interviews, which were being turned over to Congress by the Justice Department on Tuesday just hours before the special counsel, Robert Hur, was going before the House Judiciary Committee to face questions about his investigation of Biden.Hur, in his report, concluded that Biden should not face criminal charges over his mishandling of documents but also impugned the president's age and competence."
Negative
-12% Liberal
"The Associated Press reviewed a transcript of the Biden interviews, which were being turned over to Congress by the Justice Department on Tuesday just hours before the special counsel, Robert Hur, was going before the House Judiciary Committee to face questions about his investigation of Biden.Hur, in his report, concluded that Biden should not face criminal charges over his mishandling of documents but also impugned the president's age and competence."
Negative
-12% Liberal
"Biden went on to recount in detail the story contained in his book, Promise Me, Dad, of how his late son had encouraged him to remain engaged in public life after the Obama administration ended."
Negative
-12% Liberal
"Biden went on to recount in detail the story contained in his book, Promise Me, Dad, of how his late son had encouraged him to remain engaged in public life after the Obama administration ended."
Negative
-12% Liberal
"Hur, in his report, detailed how his findings about Biden were far different from those of special counsel Jack Smith about Republican front-ruer Donald Trump, who has been charged with willfully retaining classified documents.FBI agents searched Trump's Florida estate in 2022 and removed boxes of documents marked as classified after he refused multiple requests from the National Archives to return them."
Positive
4% Conservative
"Hur, in his report, detailed how his findings about Biden were far different from those of special counsel Jack Smith about Republican front-ruer Donald Trump, who has been charged with willfully retaining classified documents.FBI agents searched Trump's Florida estate in 2022 and removed boxes of documents marked as classified after he refused multiple requests from the National Archives to return them."
Positive
4% Conservative
"In part, he argued, jurors could be swayed that Biden's age made him seem forgetful, and there was the possibility for iocent explanations for the mishandling of any records."
Negative
-16% Liberal
"Both the hearing and the transcript were meant to clear up lingering questions about Hur's report on the discovery of some classified records at Biden's home and former Washington private office."
Negative
-18% Liberal
"On Capitol Hill, Hur appeared set to be the rare witness likely to be vilified all around -- by Republicans angry over his decision not to charge the president, and by Democrats for his unflattering commentary about Biden."
Negative
-18% Liberal
"In the interviews, Biden said he did not recall the exchange, or that he had actually discovered any documents."
Negative
-18% Liberal
"He said if he had discussed anything questionable with the ghostwriter, it was in referring to a 20-page sensitive memo he had written to then-President Barack Obama in 2009 arguing against surging troops in Afghanistan that he wanted to ensure didn't make it into publication."
Negative
-18% Liberal
"But there was no guarantee they would alter preconceived notions about the president or the Trump appointee who investigated him, particularly in a hard-fought election year."
Negative
-22% Liberal
"In his interviews, Biden repeatedly told prosecutors that he did not know how classified documents ended up at his home and former Pe Biden Center office in Washington."
Negative
-22% Liberal
"Confusion over the timing of the death of Biden's adult son Beau -- who died May 30, 2015 -- was highlighted by Hur in his report as an example of the president's memory lapses."
Negative
-22% Liberal
"Biden first sat down with Hur during a time of crisis, one day after the devastating Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7."
Negative
-26% Liberal
"How in the hell dare he raise that, Biden said of Hur."
Negative
-28% Liberal
"At the same time, it makes plain that the Republican lawyer never asked Biden about the timing of his son's death, contradicting the president's indignant public objections to that supposed line of questioning."
Negative
-30% Liberal
"Hur devoted much of his report to explaining why he did not believe the evidence against Biden met the standard for criminal charges, partly based on the hours of interviews with the president."
Negative
-30% Liberal
"But the transcript shows that Hur never asked Biden about his son specifically, as a visibly angry Biden had suggested in comments to reporters the day the report was released."
Negative
-30% Liberal
"But the transcript shows that Hur never asked Biden about his son specifically, as a visibly angry Biden had suggested in comments to reporters the day the report was released."
Negative
-30% Liberal
"In the report, Hur said that it could be difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Biden intended to keep the documents, which is the standard for conviction in a criminal case."
Negative
-32% Liberal
"Republicans were likely to dig further into Hur's assessment of the president's age and memory -- a major attack line as they seek to unseat Biden come November."
Negative
-34% Liberal
"And in that context, it was Biden himself who brought up Beau's illness and death as he talked about a book he'd published later in 2017 about that painful time."
Negative
-34% Liberal
"Democrats will try to paint Hur, whom Donald Trump appointed a U.S. attorney, as a political partisan out to help his party win a presidential election."
Negative
-20% Liberal
"But the transcript suggests that the exchange was less revealing about Biden's memory than Hur let on, and that Biden's recollection of it during his emotional White House remarks was incorrect."
Negative
-56% Liberal
"But the transcript suggests that the exchange was less revealing about Biden's memory than Hur let on, and that Biden's recollection of it during his emotional White House remarks was incorrect."
Negative
-56% Liberal
"Biden and Trump: How the two classified documents investigations came to different endingsWhile Biden fumbled some details in his interview, the full transcript could raise questions about Hur's depiction of the 81-year-old president as having significant limitations on his memory."
Negative
-30% Liberal
"Biden and Trump: How the two classified documents investigations came to different endingsWhile Biden fumbled some details in his interview, the full transcript could raise questions about Hur's depiction of the 81-year-old president as having significant limitations on his memory."
Negative
-30% Liberal
"Biden and Trump: How the two classified documents investigations came to different endingsWhile Biden fumbled some details in his interview, the full transcript could raise questions about Hur's depiction of the 81-year-old president as having significant limitations on his memory."
Negative
-30% Liberal

Bias Meter

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-100%
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100%
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Bias Meter

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

67% : "The need to show my work was especially strong here," he said.
53% : Before the redactions, the transcript had been classified as top secret and barred from dissemination to foreign nationals.
30% : Democrats will try to paint Hur, whom Donald Trump appointed a U.S. attorney, as a political partisan out to help his party win a presidential election.
10% : Biden and Trump: How the two classified documents investigations came to different endingsWhile Biden fumbled some details in his interview, the full transcript could raise questions about Hur's depiction of the 81-year-old president as having "significant limitations" on his memory.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.

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