WASHINGTON — The special counsel who questioned the president’s age and competency in his report on Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents after his years as vice president will be questioned himself on Tuesday, as House Republicans want to keep the president’s unflattering assessment in the spotlight. .
Robert Hur will appear before the Judiciary Committee to answer hours of questions from Republicans and Democrats about his 345-page report, made public last month, in which he concluded that Biden should not face criminal charges for his handling of sensitive government information while he was deputy director .
Hur’s report cited evidence that Biden deliberately retained highly classified information and shared it with a ghostwriter. But the special counsel devoted much of his report to explaining why he did not believe the evidence met the standard for criminal prosecution, based in part on five hours of interviews with the president.
Hur said it could be difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Biden intended to keep the documents, which is the standard for conviction in a criminal case. In part, he argued, jurors could be convinced that Biden’s age made him seem forgetful, and that there were “innocent explanations” possible for the mishandling of documents.
“Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview with him, as a likable, well-meaning, older man with a poor memory,” Hur wrote in his report.
Lawmakers on both sides will try to turn the hearing to their political advantage: Hur will be the rare witness likely to be vilified everywhere, by Republicans angry over his decision not to indict the president, and by Democrats for his comments on Biden.
Republicans will look to dig further into Hur’s unflattering assessment of the president’s age and memory — a key line of attack in their bid to unseat Biden. Democrats will try to portray Hur, a former U.S. attorney appointed by Trump, as a political partisan who wants to help his party win the presidential election.
Democrats on the committee have been preparing for the hearing for weeks, with the staff bringing in constitutional attorney Norm Eisen, who served as former President Barack Obama’s ethics czar, to help determine the best method of questioning, according to a aide to Congress.
The aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private meetings, said members of the president’s party plan to be aggressive during their questioning. They hope to highlight the fact that despite what they see as inappropriate comments from Hur about Biden’s age and memories, the special counsel ultimately cleared him of any criminal wrongdoing.
Republicans, who have been eager to investigate the president, including a strenuous effort to impeach him, will press Hur on Biden’s mental acuity. They also hope to highlight what they say is unfair treatment by Attorney General Merrick Garland of Donald Trump, who has been accused of deliberately withholding classified documents. FBI agents searched Trump’s Florida estate in 2022 and removed boxes of documents after he refused requests from the National Archives to return them.
House committees have also subpoenaed the Justice Department for data on the Biden investigation, including transcripts, notes, video and audio files.
“Special Counsel Robert Hur’s investigation into President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents made two things clear: there is a double standard of justice in this country, and Joe Biden is unfit for office,” said the Judiciary Chairman power Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, recently .
The report’s release drew immediate comparisons to the history-making events of 2016, when FBI Director James Comey excoriated Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton for her email practices but did not recommend filing charges. In both the Biden and Clinton cases, the language used to characterize the subjects has been as scrutinized – and criticized – as the decision not to prosecute. Comey also went before a congressional committee, where he offered an impassioned public defense of his handling of the issue.
And despite the expectation of political fireworks, Hur – if he is any kind of special counsel for him – will not deviate further from the report’s findings.
He comes to the hearing with a wealth of experience in politically charged investigations, both as a top Justice Department official during the Trump administration and as head of federal law enforcement in Maryland. As a top assistant to the Justice Department’s deputy attorney general in 2017 and early 2018, Hur helped monitor special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. And he prosecuted a number of political figures — including former Mayor of Baltimore Catherine Pugh – as U.S. Attorney for Maryland from 2018 to 2021.
After retiring as U.S. attorney, Hur joined the Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher Law Firm. Among his clients was Facebook in a case brought by the D.C. attorney general seeking to punish the social networking company for unlawfully giving data mining firm Cambridge Analytica access to data on as many as 87 million users. Hur managed to get that case dismissed last year, although DC has appealed.
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Associated Press writers Eric Tucker in Washington and Alanna Durkin Richer in Boston contributed to this report.