Special Counsel Robert Hur couldn’t charge President Biden with any crimes related to the handling of classified documents, so he made his report an opinionated political hit job.
Special Counsel Robert Hur Is A Trump Nominee
Hur is a Republican Trump nominee, who appears to have gone out of his way to smear President Biden with characterizations like:
– Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him — by then a former president well into his eighties — of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.
– He did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended (‘if it was 2013 — when did I stop being Vice President?’), and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began (‘in 2009, am I still Vice President?’)
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– He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died.
Unless the Special Counsel has tapes that will be released of President Biden having memory issues, his descriptions should be considered subjective characterizations.
Hur is not a medical professional, and he did not evaluate Biden’s memory.
The White House Disagrees With Hur’s Characterizations
Special Counsel to the President Richard Sauber said in a statement, “We disagree with a number of inaccurate and inappropriate comments in the Special Counsel’s report. “Nonetheless, the most important decision the Special Counsel made—that no charges are warranted—is firmly based on the facts and evidence.”
The main point is that Hur found no willful wrongdoing in Biden keeping the classified documents. Since the documents were in his personal notebooks, Biden thought that he was allowed to have them. The Biden situation is the opposite of Donald Trump, who willfully and intentionally lied and refused to give classified information back to the United States government.
There are elements of this report that feel very partisan and political. It is almost as if Hur realized that Biden couldn’t be charged for the classified documents, so he set out to smear the President.
Biden will have ample opportunity to prove that his memory is fine, but the big takeaway is that Trump remains the only former president or vice president to be charged with stealing classified documents.
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Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
