WASHINGTON — Special counsel Robert Hur found that President Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials” following his vice presidency — but recommended that the commander-in-chief not face charges Thursday.

Sensitive records from Biden’s vice presidency and Senate tenure were stored without proper safeguards at his residence in Wilmington, Del., and at his pre-presidency office in DC provided by the University of Pennsylvania.

Hur’s investigation into the 81-year-old president was notably quiet, with few leaks to the media — unlike the headline-grabbing probe of former President Donald Trump on similar grounds.

Trump, 77, is seeking a rematch against Biden in the November election and has alleged a double standard.

The 45th president faces 40 criminal charges and a maximum penalty of 450 years in prison for allegedly mishandling classified documents after leaving the White House in 2021.

The FBI raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm beach, Fla., to retrieve documents in August 2022 — just months before the revelation that Biden had stashed classified documents at various locations, including in his home garage, which lacked Secret Service protection for a period of time.

The ex-president allegedly hindered attempts by the National Archives to retrieve the documents, which he argued he was entitled to keep under the Presidential Records Act.

Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Hur to investigate Biden’s handling of records dating to his vice presidency and Senate years on Jan. 12 of last year — after sequential admissions of new discoveries by the White House.

Biden was interviewed by investigators in October — roughly a year after he chided Trump as “irresponsible” for retaining classified documents.

Biden’s lawyers said they initially found classified documents on Nov. 2 while clearing out his former office at the Penn Biden Center near Capitol Hill.

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The discovery, six days before the midterm elections, was kept quiet until CBS News broke the story Jan. 9.

Additional Biden classified documents were found on Dec. 20 in his Wilmington garage, followed by a series of additional discoveries at the home, including by the FBI, which also searched Biden’s Rehoboth Beach, Del., vacation home and left with written notes.

Biden sought to downplay the controversy, telling PBS last February, “To the best of my knowledge, the kind of things they picked up are things that — from 1974, stray papers.”

“There is no there there,” Biden told reporters last January.

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Biden first publicly acknowledged the discovery of classified documents at the Penn Biden Center at a Jan. 10 press conference in Mexico City.

In his initial remarks, Biden didn’t say that a second cache of classified documents had been found in his Wilmington garage.

Biden admitted on Jan. 12 that records were found next to his classic Corvette in Wilmington, but denied he was reckless with the nation’s secrets.

“My Corvette is in a locked garage, OK? So it’s not like they’re sitting out on the street,” Biden said.

The White House said at the time that searches for records were complete, but additional documents were found by Biden’s lawyers. An FBI search found six more items with classification markings.

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