Special Counsel Robert Hur is testifying before the House Judiciary Committee about his investigation into President Biden’s handling of classified documents.
Hur’s final report described Biden as an “elderly man with a poor memory” and said his age and mental state made a criminal prosecution difficult.
Democrats have accused Hur of using prejudicial language to disparage Biden, while Republicans have cited the report to argue Biden is unfit for a second term.
Adam Schiff SNAPS at Special Counsel Hur after declaring Biden UNFIT for office in official DOJ report pic.twitter.com/22qwxLcAca
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) March 12, 2024
“Mr. Hur, you cannot tell me you’re so naive as to think your words would not have created a political firestorm. You understood that, didn’t you, when you wrote those words?” Rep. Adam Schiff said.
“You were not born yesterday. You understood exactly what you were doing,” Schiff said.
In his testimony, Hur will maintain that politics played no role in his assessment and that he was simply presenting the evidence objectively as jurors would perceive it.
“Most importantly, what I wrote is what I believe the evidence shows, and what I expect jurors would perceive and believe,” Hur’s prepared statement reads. “I did not sanitize my explanation. Nor did I disparage the President unfairly.”
“Hur finished his work last week and is no longer employed by the department,” a spokesperson said.
“My task was to determine whether the President retained or disclosed national defense information ‘willfully’ — meaning, knowingly and with the intent to do something the law forbids,” Hur says.
“I could not make that determination without assessing the president’s state of mind. I had to consider the president’s memory and overall mental state, and how a jury likely would perceive his memory and mental state in a criminal trial,” Hur adds.
“Mr. Biden will likely present himself to the jury, as he did during his interview with our office, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” Hur wrote. “It would be difficult to convince a jury they should convict him – by then a former president who will be at least well into his eighties – of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”
“Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen,” the report added.
While Hur’s report spared Biden criminal charges, it delivered a blow to his reelection hopes by publicly describing him as forgetful and incapable of criminal intent due to his age.
The testimony is reviving debate about Biden’s fitness for office and whether Hur conducted a fair and unbiased investigation.
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