A month after the release of a report from Department of Justice Special Counsel Robert Hur, which detailed the severe extent of President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline, the American people remain in the dark on the answers to three important questions that should be top of mind as House Republicans prepare to question Hur on March 12.
Does Attorney General Merrick Garland agree with Hur’s analysis of Biden’s mental state?
The DOJ commissioned Hur’s investigation to look into Biden’s potentially illegal retention of classified documents following his time as a U.S. Senator and vice president to Barack Obama. But the real headlines from the final report came from Hur’s recommendation that, despite evidence Biden willfully retained classified documents, no charges should be filed against him because a jury would likely view the president as an “elderly man with a poor memory.”
Hur also recounted interviews with Biden in which the president allegedly could not remember major details of his life, including when his son, Beau, died, and the time period in which he served as vice president.
Given that Hur’s report was a product of Biden’s Department of Justice, Americans deserve to know if Attorney General Merrick Garland agrees with Hur’s findings – specifically Hur’s analysis of Biden’s mental state. Garland has not disagreed, contested, or attempted to redact any part of Hur’s report despite being under immense pressure from the White House to do so.
Deputy Associate Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer, a top-ranking career DOJ official, has vigorously pushed back on the White House’s criticism of the report, apparently with Garland’s blessing.
If one of Biden’s own cabinet officials indeed believes that the president is an “elderly man with a poor memory,” it would present an even more credible and devastating commentary about the president’s fitness to serve a second term. It might even raise questions about whether Garland believes the 25th Amendment should be invoked to remove Biden from office now.
Did the White House succeed in removing damning revelations from Hur’s report?
As Politico has detailed, months prior to the public release of Hur’s report, “shortly after Hur had interviewed Biden, another White House lawyer urged the special counsel to make his final report ‘economical,’ arguing that a succinct, straightforward approach devoid of commentary would adhere to Justice Department principles.”
Reading between the lines, that sounds suspiciously like a pressure campaign from the White House to remove even more damaging details about either the extent of Biden’s wrongdoing or his “poor memory.”
Moreover, top members of Biden’s White House team have already shown that they have no compunction when it comes to blasting the DOJ for doing its job. Vice President Kamala Harris, a former Attorney General of California, called the descriptions of Biden’s mental lapses “politically motivated,” while a letter to Garland from Biden’s White House Counsel Edward Siskel and personal lawyer Bob Bauer said Hur’s recounting of Biden’s poor memory was “uncalled for and unfounded.”
What Harris, Siskel, and Bauer should all know is that per the Principles of Federal Prosecution section in the DOJ’s Justice Manual, even when there is probable cause for a federal prosecutor to bring charges, a “prosecutor may commence or recommend federal prosecution only if he/she believes that the person will more likely than not be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt by an unbiased trier of fact and that the conviction will be upheld on appeal.”
Because Hur found clear and compelling evidence that “Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen” and had “marked classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan” in his possession, DOJ procedures required that Hur provide reasoning for recommending against charging Biden – even if that reasoning may seem rather thin to conservatives.
But Biden’s defenders say that Hur simply should have recommended against charging Biden with a crime while providing no rationale for doing so. Given this very public flouting of standard DOJ procedure, it’s worth asking if anyone at the White House succeeded in removing some details from the report before its public release.
Will Democrats end the “documents hoax” against former President Donald Trump?
Along with dealing a potentially devastating blow to Biden’s public image and re-election bid, the Hur report also appears to completely undermine the DOJ’s political prosecution of former President Donald Trump for his alleged retention of classified documents.
Unlike Biden, Trump was president at the time he ostensibly took the documents in question, and thus had broad power to declassify any document he chose. Yet Biden’s FBI still conducted a raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in a transparent attempt to deal the former president a political blow as he mounted a comeback bid against Biden.
The fact that the same DOJ which sanctioned the Mar-a-Lago raid is now recommending against charging Biden with mishandling classified documents, when Biden had no authority to declassify them, is a glaring example of a two tiered justice system at work.
Along with exposing Biden’s cognitive decline, then, the Hur report may have also exposed the partisan nature of the investigation into Trump’s own alleged mishandling of classified documents.
The American people may soon get more insight into some of these questions, as the House Judiciary Committee has subpoenaed the entirety of Hur’s transcripts, notes, videos, and audio files from his interviews with Biden, along with scheduling public testimony from Hur.
As damaging as the public release of the Hur report was for Biden, the worst may be yet to come.
Katharine “Katie” Sullivan was an Acting Assistant Attorney General and a senior advisor to the White House Domestic Policy Council under President Trump. She previously served 11 years as a state trial court judge in Colorado.
