President Joe Biden dodged accountability when Special Counsel Robert Hur determined that he'd illegally retained classified documents from his time as a senator and vice president but declined to pursue criminal charges because of his age and declining mental health.

Now, as Biden is set to leave the White House, there are some concerns that he may once again take classified documents with him that should otherwise be stored with the National Archives, Inkl reported.

Notably, while Biden dodged prosecution for his confirmed mishandling of classified documents, his predecessor and successor, President-elect Donald Trump, was prosecuted to the fullest extent for the same alleged mishandling, and that litigation was only ended after he won re-election because of a Justice Department policy against prosecuting sitting presidents.

Where is Biden's special task force?

The Associated Press reported that legitimate questions are circulating about how President Biden and his team are handling classified documents from his four-year administration as he prepares to leave the White House in a week.

Those questions stem from the fact that, after he was let off the hook for his prior mishandling of classified materials, Biden created a special task force to review transition period practices and protocols and make recommendations for improvements -- only those recommendations never came.

According to an Axios report in Feb. 2024, the Presidential Records Transition Task Force was formed in the White House and instructed to "evaluate existing procedures and study previous presidential transitions" as well as to "identify ways to address the removal of classified documents."

The stated purpose of the task force was to address the "longstanding problem" of classified documents being mishandled by departing presidents, vice presidents, and other top officials, and to make sure that all "sensitive presidential records are preserved" with the National Archives.

White House assurances are hollow

Yet, as the AP noted, the recommendations President Biden ordered the task force to provide never came, or at least were never shared publicly, and there are valid concerns that Biden may once again abscond from government service with classified documents in his possession that he is not authorized to retain.

When asked recently about the packing of materials at the White House in light of the lack of recommendations from the task force, Biden's press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre attempted to assure reporters, "We are going to do our best, certainly, to be careful, to follow the rules, to do this the right way, to follow traditions, obviously, as the president truly wants to do."

Those assurances carry little weight, however, given the deceitful nature and untrustworthiness of the Biden administration over the past several years, and the incoming Trump administration may consider adopting a "trust, but verify" policy to double-check and ensure that Biden hasn't taken any materials with him that he is not authorized to take.

Biden's cognitive decline saved him from prosecution

It was in Feb. 2024, while President-elect Trump was facing multiple criminal charges for his alleged unauthorized retention of classified documents from the White House at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, that Special Counsel Hur released a report outlining President Biden's own unauthorized retention of classified documents at various locations.

Hur's report detailed how dozens of classified and sensitive documents and other materials were found stored haphazardly in Biden's garage in Delaware and unused office space in Washington D.C., which the federal prosecutor determined had been "willfully" and knowingly retained by Biden after his time as a U.S. senator and as vice president.

However, Hur ultimately declined to bring charges against Biden because he and his team of prosecutors "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."

A year later, Biden's cognitive decline has unquestionably worsened, but after having escaped responsibility for his prior unauthorized retention of classified documents, and without the supposed task force laying down the law with recommendations for better practices and procedures for handling such materials, it seems possible, if not probable, that he will do the same thing again.