At first sight it looked like a scene from the TV show ‘Hoarders’.
There were the usual useless items piled on top of each other – a broken lamp, an old bucket, disused plant pots and a forgotten wicker basket.
But nestled amid the mess, in a battered cardboard box, there were also classified documents detailing a troop surge in Afghanistan.
This was the scene that greeted FBI investigators when they ventured into Joe Biden’s chaotic garage in Delaware.
Biden’s own DOJ says he is an ‘elderly man with a poor memory’: Damning classified documents probe reveals he forgot when his son Beau died or when he was vice president and left Afghanistan files next to a dog bed in his garage
A view of Biden’s garage where classified Afghanistan documents were found
According to a Justice Department report the Afghanistan documents were found ‘in a badly damaged box in the garage, near a collapsed dog crate, a dog bed, a Zappos box, an empty bucket, a broken lamp wrapped with duct tape, potting soil, and synthetic firewood.’
There was also a running machine, a step ladder, and what appeared to be an old bean bag.
Other photographs released in a 388-page report showed the inside of cluttered storage closet in the garage.
There were also images of another messy closet at Biden’s office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington.
Other pictures showed his home office in his basement in Delaware and notebooks he kept there in unlocked drawers.
The Justice Department report from special counsel Robert Hur, released Thursday, gave a harshly critical assessment of Biden’s handling of sensitive government materials.
It concluded that he should not be criminally charged because a jury would be unlikely to convict him.
That was because jurors would conclude he had ‘diminished faculties’.
The cluttered inside of Biden’s garage storage closet where Senate documetns were discovered
An unlocked drawer in Biden’s home office in Delaware where notebooks from his time as vice president were found
Hur wrote: “Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.”
Part of the report centers on Biden’s handling of classified documents about Afghanistan.
Specifically, they related to the Obama administration’s decision to send additional troops there.
Biden retained documents relating to that after he left office as vice president, and they were in his Delaware home.
He kept materials documenting his opposition to the troop surge, including a 2009 classified handwritten memo to Obama.
“These materials were proof of the stand Mr. Biden took in what he regarded as among the most important decisions of his vice presidency,” the report said.
Biden’s office at the Penn Biden Center in washington
Another view of his office at the Penn Biden Center
The documents have classification markings up to the Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information level.
They were found in a box in Biden’s Delaware garage “that contained other materials of great significance to him and that he appears to have personally used and accessed.”
Photographs included in the report showed some of the classified Afghanistan documents stored in a worn cardboard box stored in his garage, apparently in a loose collection with other household items.
Classified documents from the Obama administration were also found in Biden’s basement den, according to the report.
Classified documents from his time in the Senate in the 1970s and 1980s were also found in his garage.