Five lessons from Hur’s testimony on the investigation into Biden’s confidential documents

Robert K. Hur, the former special counsel who investigated President Biden’s possession of classified documents after he left the vice presidency, testified before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.

Republicans criticized Mr. Hur over his conclusion that the evidence was insufficient to charge Mr. Biden with a crime. Democrats, for their part, attacked him for disparaging comments in his report on Mr. Biden’s mental acuity — including calling him a “well-meaning, older man with a poor memory” who had “diminished his faculties late in life.”

Here are five takeaways:

Hur was attacked by both sides.

Members of both parties were unhappy with aspects of Mr. Hur’s report. Republicans were angry that Mr. Biden was not charged with a crime, and repeatedly pointed to the criminal indictment against former President Donald J. Trump, which accuses him of deliberately withholding sensitive national security documents. Democrats accused Mr. Hur of smearing Mr. Biden’s mental acuity, saying that was contrary to Justice Department practices.

Sometimes the comments became harsh.

Representative Hank Johnson, Democrat of Georgia, accused Mr. Hur of deliberately providing fodder to “play into Republicans’ narrative that the president is unfit for office because he is senile.” That casting was false, he said, pointing to Mr. Biden’s energetic speech at the State of the Union.

Getting Mr. Hur, a former Trump political appointee to acknowledge that he is a registered Republican, accused Mr. Johnson of “doing everything you can do to get President Trump re-elected so you can be appointed to federal judge or perhaps to another position at the Ministry of Justice.”

Mr. Hur responded that he “had no such ambitions.” He insisted: ‘Party politics had no place in my work, it had no place in the investigative steps I took, it had no place in the decision I made, and it had no place in a single word of my report. ”

Across the aisle, Representative Tom Tiffany, Republican of Wisconsin, accused Mr. Hur of protecting Mr. Biden as part of what he portrayed as a politicized double standard by the Justice Department, which it accuses of committing crimes.

“I want to thank you for the work you have done to the best of your ability, but unfortunately you are part of the Praetorian Guard that guards the swamp here in Washington DC and protects the elites – and Joe Biden is part of that company of the elites,” Mr. Tiffany said.

Attempts to score political points dominated the hearing.

The hearing rarely focused on gaps in the evidence Mr. Hur gathered, beyond Mr. Biden’s mental state. Instead, Republicans sought to portray Mr. Biden as a criminal who has escaped indictment solely because he is, in the words of Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, a “senile cooperator” and “the elevator doesn’t go all the way to the ground’. the top.”

Mr. Hur, who has been under fire for making what some have described as unnecessary and disparaging comments about Mr. Biden’s memory, had an incentive to focus on how Mr. Biden’s mental state could be presented to a jury come across as relevant and appropriate to discuss. .

Democrats often focused on how Mr. Trump kept classified documents; Mr. Trump was criminally charged. That included the contrast between Mr. Biden’s cooperation and Mr. Trump’s efforts to hinder efforts to retrieve files he kept at his Florida club and residence, Mar-a-Lago. And on several occasions, they played video clips of Mr. Trump misremembering things or speaking garbled.

There was less discussion about why the facts Mr. Hur found fell short of proving Mr. Biden knew he had a particular classified document, regardless of his memory.

Yet Democrats like Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington and Representative Mary Gay Scanlon of Pennsylvania have at several points led Mr. Hur to agree that his report also included lines like: “In addition to this dearth of evidence, there are other innocent explanations for the documents we cannot refute.”

“I didn’t acquit him.”

Moments after Mr. Hur’s report became public last month, Mr. Biden’s allies quickly sought to characterize it as an exoneration of the president. In their view, Mr Hur’s failure to find enough evidence to charge the president with a crime meant Mr Biden was innocent.

But Mr. Hur did find some evidence consistent with Mr. Biden deliberately withholding classified documents — even as he also concluded that the available facts did not provide sufficient evidence. Against that backdrop, five words during a conversation with Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a Washington Democrat, could complicate Democrats’ message as the 2024 campaign unfolds.

After claiming that Mr. Hur had exonerated the president, Ms. Jayapal tried to go further with her comments. But Mr Hur intervened and said: “I did not ‘acquit’ him – that word does not appear in the report.” He repeated that several more times, under questioning from members of both parties.

The discussion offered an echo of an ambiguous and much-researched line in the 2019 report by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel who investigated Russian interference in the 2016 campaign. Unlike Mr. Hur, Mr. Mueller did not some indication as to whether Mr. Trump should be charged with a crime, but he wrote only that “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him” of obstruction of justice.

Hur made lawmakers say things he disagreed with.

Throughout the hearing, Mr. Hur generally kept a straight face and — except when defending himself personally — rarely raised objections to members of Congress who questioned him, even when their claims contradicted what he said or wrote.

For example, while Republicans like Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey used their time to portray Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump’s improper possession of classified documents as equals, Mr. Hur did not speak and repeated what he wrote in his report: that there are “several material differences” between the two cases.

And late in the hearing, Mr. Hur did not respond when a Democratic congresswoman, Representative Veronica Escobar of Texas, declared that “you were able to completely and totally exonerate him of any criminal wrongdoing.”

The hearing seemed likely to resonate in the coming campaign.

Some of the most intense conversations have focused on the president’s age and cognitive abilities, and are likely to resonate in the next eight months of the 2024 presidential campaign as Mr. Biden faces a rematch with Mr. Trump.

Biden, who at 81 is already the oldest elected president, has been dogged for months by concerns about his age among voters of both parties. He and his allies have dismissed those concerns, but Mr. Hur’s report described memory problems during a five-hour interview.

On Tuesday, Republicans repeatedly tried to engage Mr. Hur in discussions about the president’s state of mind, but he refused to go beyond the words in his report. Democrats, meanwhile, angrily disputed Mr. Hur’s claim that he was not political: “You were not born yesterday, you understood exactly what you were doing. It was a choice, said Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California.

Within the West Wing, the political damage has already been done by Mr Hur’s report. And Tuesday’s hearing can do little but reinforce it — a reality Republicans were clearly aware of when they invited him to testify.

For the president’s opponents, Mr. Hur’s denial that he exonerated Mr. Biden could also be political gold. It’s not hard to imagine this moment appearing in political television ads in support of Trump’s campaign.

Democrats will try to focus on Mr. Hur’s conclusion that no charges should be filed, and draw a sharp contrast between the charges brought against Mr. Trump over his own handling of turning over classified documents after he had left the White House. 2021.