(NewsInsights.org) – On Monday, February 5, Special Counsel Robert Hur issued his report on his investigation into President Joe Biden’s unauthorized removal, retention, and disclosure of classified materials. Biden’s attorneys sent angry letters to the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Attorney General Merrick Garland before and after the report’s release objecting to Hur’s characterization of the president and his memory.
In his 13-page executive summary, Hur concluded Biden’s retention of documents didn’t warrant charges “even if Department of Justice policy did not foreclose criminal charges against a sitting president.” However, the president and his attorneys objected to one of Hur’s reasons for not charging the president.
Hur discussed several plausible defenses that Biden might use before a jury if charged. Among those, he included that Biden might not have initially known he possessed classified documents immediately after his vice presidency ended. He also suggested that the president was adamant that some hand-written notebooks qualified as personal materials even though they contained classified information.
The point that the special counsel summarized and to which Biden and his legal team objected was that the president’s “memory was significantly limited” during two separate interviews. Then, Hur concluded that Biden would present to a jury “as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
Biden attorneys Bob Bauer and Ed Siskel wrote directly to Hur while he was composing the draft version of the report to object to his language and characterization of the president. When Hur decided not to change his phrasing, they wrote a letter to Garland, which POLITICO published.
In keeping with his hands-off policy, Garland chose not to interfere with Hur’s report. However, DOJ senior official Bradley Weinsheimer replied to Siskel and Bauer’s letter. The two attorneys claimed that Hur made “multiple denigrating statements about President Biden’s memory,” violating “longstanding DOJ practice and policy.”
However, Weinsheimer pointed out that Hur needed to explain his justifications for not charging Biden as part of his reporting process. His remarks about the president’s memory partly affected his decision about whether the DOJ could charge and successfully prosecute the case, so they fell well within DOJ practice and policy guidelines.
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