Robert Hur, special counsel who investigated Biden, will testify before Congress

Robert K. Hur will walk into a Capitol Hill hearing room Tuesday as a unique unifying figure in divided Washington — a man despised by Democrats and Republicans alike.

In February, Mr. Hur, the special counsel who investigated President Biden, concluded a year-long investigation into Mr. Biden’s retention of sensitive government documents with the conclusion that the president should not face criminal charges.

But Mr. Hur used language that Biden’s team viewed as unnecessary, politically damaging and outside his job description, describing the octogenarian president as “a likable, well-meaning, older man with a bad memory” who is likely to be acquitted by all. jury.

Mr Hur, 51, will face withering questioning from both sides when he testifies before the House Judiciary Committee to explain his acquittal of Mr Biden and the barbed wire prose in his 345-page report.

Republicans are likely to grill him over his interactions with Justice Department officials and his legal justifications for not indicting Mr. Biden, despite finding evidence suggesting he knew some of the material that he possessed was secret. Democrats will almost certainly condemn him for making broad claims about Biden’s memory and seek to undermine his authority to make such an assessment.

“No one ever said this would be easy,” said Rod J. Rosenstein, a former deputy attorney general who appointed Hur as his top aide during a tumultuous period that included the appointment of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. to investigate his then-boss, President Donald J. Trump.

“They are going to ask him a lot of tough questions, but I expect him to limit his answers to the four corners of his report and provide truthful answers within that context,” he added.

Mr. Hur will testify as a private citizen, not as an employee of the Justice Department: As of Monday, he has resigned as special prosecutor and will be represented by a private attorney, William A. Burck, according to a department spokesman , which did not explain Mr. Hur’s reason for doing this.

Mr. Burck, a former deputy counsel in George W. Bush’s White House, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The political stakes of Tuesday’s hearing, while still high, will become clear days after Mr. Biden delivered a fiery defense of his presidency during a State of the Union address that appeared to address some of the concerns about age and mental fitness by the special counsel.

“Thirty-two million Americans saw him in command during his State of the Union address,” said Anthony Coley, the spokesman for Attorney General Merrick B. Garland when Mr. Hur was appointed in January 2023. transcript of an interview or testimony from someone they’ve never heard of to answer a question Biden addressed last week.”

It is not uncommon for witnesses in federal cases to cite their flawed memories in interviews with investigators, especially about events that occurred years earlier. But Mr. Hur included references to Mr. Biden’s memory that were not directly related to the preservation of classified documents — including the president’s struggle to remember the year (2015) his son Beau died.

Mr. Hur, a registered Republican who has avoided partisan politics during his two-decade career as a prosecutor, was chosen in part because of his reputation for calmly handling the pressures of high-speed investigations and internal department politics.

The Hur report underscores the challenges of deploying special counsel, a measure intended to protect prosecutors from political interference but which often results in the release of negative information about people cleared of criminal wrongdoing.

Current and former department officials said Mr. Hur’s unvarnished story was likely motivated by self-preservation. He had to justify his decision not to charge Mr. Biden, they said, when the administration had charged Mr. Trump over his handling and retention of government documents — even though the charges against Mr. Trump would involve much more serious offenses.

“If the target of a special counsel investigation has no complaints about the investigation, that means the investigation is likely a cupcake investigation,” said John P. Fishwick Jr., who served as U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia served. 2017.

“Mr. Hur got the mix just right as Republicans say he was too soft and the Biden team says Hur took cheap shots,” he said.