Former special counsel Robert Hur faced questions from lawmakers Tuesday during a public hearing about his yearlong investigation into President Joe Biden‘s handling of classified documents.
Republicans and Democrats alike took issue with elements of Hur’s findings, which were detailed in a lengthy report the Department of Justice released last month.
Hur had found evidence that Biden willfully retained classified documents after he left the vice presidency and that Biden “risked serious damage to America’s national security.” While unauthorized retention of classified material is against federal law, Hur said he declined to bring charges because he did not have evidence that met a reasonable doubt threshold.
Despite heated questions from lawmakers, Hur rarely deviated from commenting on already-public information. That information included a transcript of an interview Hur conducted with Biden as part of his investigation last October. The transcript surfaced for the first time through media outlets Tuesday morning, within hours of Hur’s scheduled testimony.
The transcript shed light on memory problems that Hur had said in his report contributed to his reason for declining to charge the president. The transcript, which was reviewed by the Washington Examiner, largely affirmed that Biden indeed forgot key details about his life, such as the year his son died, but that the president was also sharp and witty at other times.
Hur’s report gave ammunition to both political parties to use during the hearing. Democrats took opportunities to highlight differences between the cases of Biden and former President Donald Trump, against whom the DOJ brought 40 charges for allegedly hoarding classified documents and obstructing a federal investigation. Republicans, meanwhile, zeroed in on negative details about Biden while also raising questions about whether the DOJ had treated Biden more favorably than Trump.
Hur pushed back on claim that Biden was completely truthful during the special counsel investigation.
Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), the House Judiciary Committee ranking member, asked Hur a series of alternating questions that drew contrasts between Biden’s and Trump’s classified documents cases. At one point, however, Nadler’s effort to cast Trump in a criminal light appeared to backfire when Hur challenged him on one of his comments.
“At any point during your investigation, did you have any reason to believe that President Biden lied to you?” Nadler asked.
“I do address in my report one response the president gave to a question that we had posed to him that we deemed to be not credible,” Hur said.
Nadler then rephrased his question, asking, “Was it clear he didn’t lie?”
The question prompted a confused look from Hur, leading Nadler to drop his line of questioning.
Hur was likely referencing the moment in his report in which he detailed how Biden said he may have used the word “classified” in a recorded conversation with his ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer “in a generic sense” to refer to “sensitive or private topics.”
“This explanation – that ‘classified’ does not mean ‘classified’ – is not credible,” Hur wrote in his report, noting the president’s “nearly 50 years of experience” with handling classified material.
Hur was grilled on his findings about Biden’s ghostwriter.
Hur faced numerous questions about Zwonitzer, the ghostwriter of Biden’s 2017 memoir Promise Me, Dad. Hur found through audio recordings that Biden disclosed classified information to Zwonitzer. Hur also found that Zwonitzer deleted some of these audio recordings after Hur was appointed special counsel.
However, Hur said the evidence was not strong enough to secure a conviction against Zwonitzer for obstructing his investigation.
“The recordings had significant evidentiary value. But Zwonitzer turned over his laptop computer and external hard drive and gave consent for investigators to search the devices,” Hur wrote. “As a result, FBI technicians were able to recover deleted recordings relating to Promise Me, Dad. Zwonitzer kept, and did not delete or attempt to delete, near-verbatim transcripts he made of some of the recordings.”
Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) pressed Hur on this as he tied it to Hur’s finding that Biden had “strong motivations” to retain classified material to help write his memoir.
“The very guy who was helping Joe Biden get the $8 million … the motive for Joe Biden to disclose classified information, to retain classified information, which he definitely knew was against the law. When you get named special counsel, what’s that guy do? He destroys the evidence,” Jordan said.
“That’s the key takeaway in my mind. That’s the key takeaway,” Jordan said.
Hur cautioned that his report is not an exoneration of Biden.
Democrats, including Nadler and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), asserted that Hur had exonerated Biden, forcing Hur to counter that the report was not intended to fully clear Biden’s name of wrongdoing.
“This lengthy, expensive, and independent investigation resulted in a complete exoneration,” Jayapal said to Hur at one point before diving into a question about specific statutes governing classified material.
Before responding to her question, Hur said, “I need to go back and make sure that I take note of a word that you used, ‘exoneration.’ That is not a word that was used in the report, and that’s not part of my task as a prosecutor.”
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Jayapal interjected, “You exonerated him.”
“I did not exonerate him,” Hur shot back. “That word does not appear in the report.”
