Robert K. Hur will walk into a Capitol Hill hearing room Tuesday as a unique unifying figure in divided Washington – a man despised by Democrats and Republicans alike.
In February, Mr. Hur, the special counsel investigating President Biden, concluded a year-long investigation into Mr. Biden’s retention of sensitive government documents by concluding that criminal charges should not be brought against the president.
But Mr. Hur, in language that Mr. Biden’s team saw as unnecessary, politically damaging and outside his job description, described the octogenarian president as “a personable, well-meaning, older man with a poor memory” who would likely be acquitted by any jury .
Mr. Hur, 51, will face withering questioning from both parties when he testifies before the House Judiciary Committee to explain his exoneration of Mr. Biden and the sharp prose in his 345-page report.
Republicans are likely to grill him over his interactions with Justice Department officials and his legal justifications for not charging Mr. Biden, despite finding evidence that he knew some of the materials he possessed , were secret. Democrats will almost certainly condemn him for making sweeping claims about Mr. Biden’s memory and seek to undermine his authority to make such an assessment.
“Nobody ever said this was going to be easy,” said Rod J. Rosenstein, a former deputy attorney general who was Mr. Hur’s top adviser during a turbulent period that included the appointment of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III appointed to investigate his then-boss, President Donald J. Trump.
“You will ask him many difficult questions, but I expect him to limit his answers to the four corners of his report and give truthful answers in that context,” he added.
Mr. Hur will testify as a private citizen, not as a Justice Department employee: As of Monday, he resigned as special counsel and is being represented by a private attorney, William A. Burck, according to a department spokesman, who did not provide Mr. Hur’s reason for doing so.
Mr. Burck, a former deputy counsel in George W. Bush’s White House, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The political risks of Tuesday’s hearing, while still high, will be clear days after Mr. Biden vehemently defended his presidency during a State of the Union address in which he addressed some of the concerns he raised about age and mental fitness special advisor seemed to clear up.
“32 million Americans saw him as a commander during his State of the Union address,” said Anthony Coley, who was spokesman for Attorney General Merrick B. Garland when Mr. Hur was appointed in January 2023. “These people don’t need an interview transcript or testimony from someone they’ve never heard of to answer a question that Biden addressed last week.”
It is not uncommon for witnesses in federal cases to cite their faulty memories in interviews with investigators, particularly of events that occurred years earlier. But Mr. Hur added references to Mr. Biden’s memory that were not directly related to the preservation of classified documents — including the president’s efforts to remember the year (2015) his son Beau died.
Mr. Hur, a registered Republican who has steered clear of partisan politics during his two-decade career as a prosecutor, was chosen in part for his reputation for calmly handling the pressures of high-profile investigations and internal department politics.
The Hur report underscores the challenges of deploying special prosecutors, a move intended to protect prosecutors from political interference but which often results in the release of negative information about people cleared of criminal wrongdoing.
Current and former ministry officials said Mr. Hur’s unvarnished portrayal was likely motivated by self-preservation. He would have to justify his decision not to charge Mr. Biden, they said, as the government charged Mr. Trump over his handling and retention of government documents — even though the charges against Mr. Trump allege far more serious violations.
“If the target of a special counsel investigation has no complaints about the investigation, that means the investigation is probably a cupcake investigation,” said John P. Fishwick Jr., who served as U.S. attorney for the U.S. from 2015 to 2015 Western District of Virginia operated in 2017.
“Mr. “Hur hit the mix just right, as Republicans say he was too soft and the Biden team says Hur took cheap shots,” he said.
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2024-03-12 09:04:39
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