A former Watergate prosecutor expects President Joe Biden to escape criminal charges in his case of possession of classified documents over a legal technicality: The statute of limitations.
Lawyer Nick Akerman, who was a member of the Watergate prosecution team, said during an interview Tuesday that in this case, time is on Biden's side, Newsweek reported.
Multiple classified and top secret documents were found in Biden's private office in Washington, D.C., and in two of his Delaware homes, beginning in early November. He has had the documents since when he served as vice president, ending in January 2016.
Akerman was asked by NewsNation if Biden could face consequences for having the documents for such a long time.
"The long period of time, really, kind of is outside the statute of limitations for any kind of criminal charge," Akerman said. "The normal criminal statute of limitations here is five years. Unless something else happened in between, there really is no crime to charge."
Biden has criticized former President Donald Trump for having classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, which were retrieved during an FBI raid in August.
Akerman said that Biden has been cooperating with the Justice Department in his case while Trump had "personally directed his attorneys to say there were no further documents when he obviously knew there were because some of these documents were in his personal safe and in his personal desk."
Trump and his defenders have countered that his documents were safe under the watchful eyes of the Secret Service, and Biden's were not.
Akerman was critical of the government for not keeping track of any of Biden's or Trump's documents and allowing them to go missing.
"My local library, when I was in junior high school, did a better job of keeping track of the books that I took out and made sure I turned them back in," Akerman said. "The real question is, What does the government do in terms of cataloging what's given to people, to presidents, to vice presidents, to Cabinet members? And what efforts are made when they catalog it to go back and make sure that everything's turned back in?"
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