Lawyers for Joe Biden’s White House pressured Attorney General Merrick Garland to cover up the Hur report on Joe Biden’s mishandling of classified materials prior to its publication. They also pressured Special Counsel Robert Hur directly, arguing strenuously for a “confidential and limited” report kept secret from the public.
Biden’s lawyers appeared to try and influence the tone and tenor of Hur’s report in a letter to AG Garland, alleging Hur had “violate[d] Department of Justice policy” and complaining about his “multiple denigrating statements about President Biden’s memory.”
They suggested Hur could “certainly and properly note that the President lacked memory of a specific fact or series of events” — but should not “include allegations that the President has a failing memory in a general sense.” (Hur noted Biden could not remember when he was Vice President or when his son Beau died, “even within several years.”)
In a letter to Hur himself, the White House appeared to apply more direct pressure, arguing against a” detailed public report” being published at all. They quoted former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein as saying, “Criminal investigations emphatically are not supposed to be transparent” if a suspect is not being charged and that “disclosing uncharged allegations against American citizens without a law-enforcement need is considered to be a violation of a prosecutor’s trust.”
Biden’s lawyers insisted Hur’s report should be “confidential and limited” — and that mere “brief notifications” by the Attorney General to Congress would serve “[t]he interests of the public in being informed of and understanding the reasons for the actions of the Special Counsel.”
Hur decided Biden had “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency,” but did not recommend charges in part because a jury would sympathize with him as an “elderly man with a poor memory.”
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