(RightWing.org) – Lawyers working for President Joe Biden discovered several classified documents in November 2022. They reported the discovery, and the National Archives retrieved those files. Additional sensitive records were found in December 2022 and January 2023, and Garland appointed Robert Hur as special counsel in early January 2023. He recently concluded his probe and notified the attorney general that he declined to file charges against the president.
On February 5, Hur submitted his final report to Garland as required by federal law (28 CFR § 600.8 – Special Counsel notification and reports). The 388-page document (including his two-page cover letter and three appendices) explained his decision to decline to file criminal charges against Biden.
Hur went into great detail about his reasoning, as evidenced by his cumbersome report. But, the long and short of it is actually pretty simple. He concluded that a jury could be sympathetic to Biden’s advanced age and find reasonable doubt regarding his state of mind when he “willfully retained and disclosed” the substance of classified documents after he left the White House in 2017. Continuing, Hur explained that Biden presented himself as a “sympathetic […] elderly man with a [bad] memory” during his interview with Hur’s team. He pointed out that jurors might take him at his word, adding that he would be a “former president well into his eighties” once a jury was empaneled.
On February 8, Garland sent a cover letter and copy of Hur’s report to Senators Richard Durbin (D-IL), the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), the panel’s ranking member. He also submitted it to their counterparts in the House, Representatives Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Jerrald Nadler (D-NY).
Garland advised the lawmakers that Special Counsel to the President, Richard Sauber, and Personal Counsel to Biden, Bob Bauer, reviewed Hur’s report with the president. They decided not to assert executive privilege over any of the report’s materials or appendices.
The attorney general concluded his letter by advising that it was in the “public interest” to release the document later in the day so all Americans could read Hur’s findings and conclusion.
Trump issued a statement later in the day condemning the Biden administration’s “two-tiered system of justice” and its selective prosecution of him for having “50 times more” documents in his possession than Trump did at his Mar-a-Lago residence. He concluded his remarks by calling on “deranged Jack Smith” to immediately halt his prosecution efforts in Florida, adding “election interference” in all capital letters.
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