Special counsel Robert Hur testified on Tuesday that the White House attempted to pressure him into changing aspects of his report on President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents.
The revelation came during Hur’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, in which Rep. Tom Tiffany, R-Wis., probed the special counsel head about a Feb. 5 letter the White House Counsel sent to Hur days before his report became public. When Tiffany asked whether the White House requested he “change [the report’s] references to the president’s poor memory,” Hur confirmed the administration did, in fact, make such a request.
“There was a request, yes,” Hur said, contradicting claims issued earlier in the hearing by Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., who asserted Biden did not “seek to redact a single word of Mr. Hur’s report.”
Hur confirmed this during a prior exchange with committee chair and Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.
“Did the White House try to weigh in with your investigation on elements of that report and frankly try to get that report changed,” Jordan asked, to which Hur replied, “They did request certain edits and changes to the draft report.”
As The Federalist’s Tristan Justice reported, Hur concluded “that no criminal charges are warranted” in his investigation into Biden’s mishandling of classified materials despite his team finding records “related to foreign policy in Afghanistan and handwritten notes ‘implicating sensitive intelligence.’” Federal authorities justified their refusal to charge Biden because the president “would likely present himself to the jury, as he did during our interview with him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
“Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt,” prosecutors wrote. “It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him — by then a former president well into his eighties — of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”
During his Tuesday testimony, Hur further confirmed that the White House submitted a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland days after sending a communique to Hur, objecting to the special counsel report’s analysis of Biden’s mental decline. Hur’s team noted in its report how Biden could not recall basic facts during his interview with investigators, such as “when he was vice president” or when his son, Beau, died.
The White House’s pressure campaign on Hur to alter his report before its release to the public appears to fall within the “obstruction of justice” charge Democrats accused former President Trump of committing, as it relates to Robert Mueller’s baseless investigation into whether the Republican president colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election. Of course, the baseless claim that Trump obstructed Mueller’s investigation didn’t stop Democrats from relentlessly accusing the former president of obstruction or then-Attorney General Bill Barr of stopping such charges from being filed.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
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