Special counsel Robert Hur’s report about the classified documents that were found at President Joe Biden’s home and office was very damning to the president.
In explaining one of the reasons behind not charging Biden with a crime, Hur wrote that they had to think about how a jury would perceive the president — which is as a feeble and kind-hearted old man who has a bad memory.
Now, former officials with the Department of Justice are saying that Hur overstepped the mandate in the case.
Eric Holder, who served as an attorney general under former President Barack Obama, wrote on social media:
“Special Counsel Hur report on Biden classified documents issues contains way too many gratuitous remarks and is flatly inconsistent with long standing [Justice Department] traditions.”
The report’s executive summary condemns the behavior that Biden exhibited in knowingly holding classified documents in his Delaware home and Washington, D.C., office. It also explores what might have motivated Biden to do so.
But, the report didn’t start to address the fact that there exists “a shortage of evidence” to bring charges against Biden until about halfway through the approximately 400-page report.
Following the release of the report, Ryan Goodman and Andrew Weissman wrote an analysis for Just Security. Weissman was a prosecutor who served on the team for special counsel Robert Mueller.
They wrote:
“Hur writes at the outset: ‘Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.’
“You have to wait for the later statements that what the report actually says is there is insufficient evidence of criminality, innocent explanations for the conduct, and affirmative evidence that Biden did not willfully withhold classified documents.”
One thing that Hur definitely did in the report was attack Biden’s memory multiple times. He wrote that Biden wasn’t able to recall the death of his son Beau. He also wrote that Biden didn’t recall his time as vice president, and that his memory “appeared hazy” when he talked about debates regarding Afghanistan.
In the report, Hur wrote:
“At trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory. Based on our direct interactions with observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt.”
Many Biden allies have since explained Hur and his report using the same word — gratuitous.
A former acting solicitor general in the Obama administration, Neal Katyal, said this week described the Hur report exactly that way. He told MSNBC:
“It feels like a too clever move … by the special counsel to try and take some swipes at a sitting president, and it doesn’t sit well with me at all, and I do think it is very much in tension with the Justice Department guidelines on special counsels.”
