OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
The House Judiciary Committee is hearing testimony from Special Counsel Robert Hur regarding his investigation into President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents.
And it didn’t take long for fireworks to go off.
Politicians from both parties are questioning Hur about his choice to not press charges against Biden, who called the president “an elderly man with a poor memory” in his final report.
Things heated up when California Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff suggested Hur had a political motive in writing his report, telling Hur he could not “be so naive” to not understand the “political firestorm” that would ensue from his characterizations of Biden.
“Mr. Hur, you cannot tell me you’re so naive as to think your words would not have created a political firestorm. You understood that, didn’t you, when you wrote those words?” Schiff said, referring to Hur discussing Biden’s memory in the report.
In response, Hur continued to say that “politics played no part whatsoever” in his report, saying that he followed DOJ regulations.
Schiff went on to accuse Hur of using language in his report that he knew “would be useful in a political campaign.”
“You were not born yesterday. You understood exactly what you were doing,” Schiff said.
WATCH:
Adam Schiff SNAPS at Special Counsel Hur after declaring Biden UNFIT for office in official DOJ report pic.twitter.com/22qwxLcAca
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) March 12, 2024
The publication of Hur’s final report, which called Biden an “elderly man with a poor memory,” sent liberals into panic mode. Democrats criticized Hur and the report for allegedly using “highly prejudicial language” to disparage the 81-year-old president.
Biden’s advanced age and mental state are major talking points in the 2024 presidential contest.
Republicans seized Hur’s findings and used them to support their claim that Biden is unqualified to serve a second term.
“My assessment in the report about the relevance of the President’s memory was necessary, accurate, and fair,” Hur will tell the House Judiciary Committee in prepared opening remarks, Axios noted.
“Most importantly, what I wrote is what I believe the evidence shows, and what I expect jurors would perceive and believe,” Hur’s prepared remarks state. “I did not sanitize my explanation. Nor did I disparage the President unfairly.”
Hur will deliver his testimony on Tuesday as a private citizen, a Department of Justice spokesperson confirmed to Axios.
“Hur finished his work last week and is no longer employed by the department,” the spokesperson said Tuesday morning.
Hur’s investigation concluded that after his time as vice president, Biden’s handling of classified documents posed “serious risks to national security.”
Hur says in his prepared remarks that his probe “did not, however, identify evidence that rose to the level of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”
“My task was to determine whether the President retained or disclosed national defense information ‘willfully’ — meaning, knowingly and with the intent to do something the law forbids,” Hur says.
“I could not make that determination without assessing the president’s state of mind. I had to consider the president’s memory and overall mental state, and how a jury likely would perceive his memory and mental state in a criminal trial,” Hur adds.
Hur’s 388-page report may have spared Biden the spectacle of a criminal prosecution similar to that his Justice Department imposed on former President Donald Trump, but it delivered a devastating blow to the 46th president’s re-election hopes by going out of its way to explain criminal charges weren’t levied in part because jurors might see Biden as a doddering, forgetful old man incapable of criminal intent.
“Mr. Biden will likely present himself to the jury, as he did during his interview with our office, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” Hur wrote in explaining his rationale for refusing prosecution. “It would be difficult to convince a jury they should convict him – by then a former president who will be at least well into his eighties – of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”
“Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen,” the report concluded.
Hur added that he believed Biden suffered from “diminished faculties in advancing age.”
