Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) accused special counsel Robert Hur of deliberately politicizing his report into President Joe Biden’s mishandling of classified documents.
Questioning Hur at a House hearing on Tuesday, Schiff said Hur went beyond his responsibilities as a special counsel in his conclusion questioning Biden’s memory.
“Congressman, I could have written my report theoretically in a way that omitted references to the president’s memory. But that would have been an incomplete and improper report,” Hur said in response to the accusation.
“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, when you decided to include those words, when you decided to go beyond specific references to documents, you understood how they would be manipulated by my colleagues here on the GOP side of the aisle by President Trump,” Schiff said. “You understood that, did you not?”
Hur further defended his actions, arguing that the report was fully within the bounds of his duties as special counsel.
“Congressman, what I understood is the regulations that govern my conduct as special counsel. And those regulations require me to write a confidential report for the attorney general,” he said.
The special counsel also said Schiff was implying that he should have released a more sanitized version of the report, a move that likewise could be seen as political.
“What you were suggesting is that I needed to provide a different version of my report that would be fit for public release. That is nowhere in the rules. I was to prepare a confidential report that was comprehensive and thorough,” Hur said.
“What is in the rules is, you don’t gratuitously do things to prejudice the subject of an investigation where you’re declining to prosecute,” Schiff responded. “You don’t gratuitously add language that you know will be useful in a political campaign. You were not born yesterday. You understood exactly what you were doing.”
“You understood that you made a choice,” Schiff said. “That was a political choice. It was the wrong choice.”
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Hur’s testimony on Tuesday followed the transcript of his interview with the president being released early in the morning. It detailed that Biden struggled to remember key dates and noted he was unfamiliar with how classified documents ended up in his possession.
Schiff is running to represent California in the Senate, in which he is slated to face Republican baseball star Steve Garvey in the general election.
