Special counsel Robert Hur will face a grilling on Capitol Hill on Tuesday about his report that found President Joe Biden mishandled classified documents from his time as vice president and senator.
Hur will appear before the House Judiciary Committee for a public hearing at 10 a.m. Reps. James Comer (R-KY) and Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the chairman and ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, will waive into the hearing to question Hur as well, their representatives said.
Hur released a 388-page report in February detailing findings from a yearlong investigation into documents with classified markings that were found at Biden’s office in Washington, D.C., and home in Wilmington, Delaware.
Hur, a private practice attorney who served as a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in Maryland until 2021, was assigned by Attorney General Merrick Garland to lead the special counsel investigation into the president beginning in January last year.
In his report, Hur concluded that Biden may have willfully retained classified documents in unauthorized places and that he disclosed classified information to the ghostwriter of his 2017 memoir.
While Hur declined to bring charges, his report was highly critical of Biden and contained details suggesting the president’s memory was lacking. Republicans responded by raising the alarm about the 81-year-old’s ability to hold office and run for reelection if his mental acuity was inadequate, while the White House has defended Biden, calling the details about his memory “gratuitous.”
The report is the focus of Tuesday’s hearing, but Republicans and Democrats will also have an opportunity to draw a contrast to the classified documents case special counsel Jack Smith brought against former President Donald Trump.
Republicans, in particular, raised questions about the DOJ’s “commitment to impartial justice” after the report’s release, and they are expected to zero in on this during the hearing, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Hur, perhaps anticipating the comparisons to Trump, directly addressed in his report what he viewed as “material distinctions” between the two cases.
“Unlike the evidence involving Mr. Biden, the allegations set forth in the indictment of Mr. Trump, if proven, would clearly establish not only Mr. Trump’s willfulness but also serious aggravating facts,” Hur wrote.
Still, Republicans are expected to scrutinize the DOJ’s legal standards for bringing classified documents cases.
In his report, Hur said Biden was cooperative and proactive from the outset of his investigation. Trump, by contrast, is alleged to have not only willfully retained national defense information but to have also obstructed federal investigators probing the documents in Trump’s possession, Hur noted.
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Hur said that in Biden’s case, the president retained classified documents related to “seminal moments” from his vice presidency, such as decisions he made about U.S. policy on Afghanistan, but that he could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Biden did so willfully.
Hur said one reason he chose not to charge Biden was that the president’s memory appeared to be so poor that a jury may think Biden made an “innocent mistake” in keeping the documents.
