We still don’t know a lot of important facts about President Joe Biden’s retention of classified documents at his Penn-Biden center office and Delaware home. For that matter, there’s a lot we still don’t know about former president Donald Trump’s retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. What is certain is the legal concept that prosecutors will have to use to determine whether to prosecute either president: intent.
The relevant provision of the Espionage Act is fairly clear. It’s a crime if you both “willfully” retain classified documents and also “fail” to deliver them “on demand” to the government official “entitled” to receive them.
The adverb “willfully” is standard legal language, a close cousin to “knowingly.” To act willfully, in the legal sense, is to act intentionally, consciously and voluntarily. As the Department of Justice has put it, relying on judicial interpretation of statutes, “An act is done ‘willfully’ if done voluntarily and intentionally and with the specific intent to do something the law forbids.”
