Special counsel Robert Hur will defend on Tuesday the observations he made about President Joe Biden’s memory in his final report on the investigation into Biden’s handling of classified materials.
Ahead of his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, Hur will deliver an opening statement, obtained by National Review, addressing criticisms of his decision to comment on Biden’s apparent memory lapses in his report, explaining that the commentary was necessary to explain why he didn’t believe Biden should be charged with willfully retaining classified documents, even though he had determined that the president did in fact knowingly retain such material.
“There has been a lot of attention paid to language in the report about the President's memory, so let me say a few words about that. My task was to determine whether the President retained or disclosed national defense information ‘willfully’—meaning, knowingly and with the intent to do something the law forbids. I could not make that determination without assessing the President's state of mind,” Hur’s opening statement reads.
“For that reason, I had to consider the President's memory and overall mental state, and how a jury likely would perceive his memory and mental state in a criminal trial. These are the types of issues prosecutors analyze every day.”
Joe Biden’s memory was an important consideration for Hur’s decision not to pursue criminal charges against the sitting president, Hur is set to testify. While Hur did find evidence Biden “willfully” retained classified information about foreign policy and national-security issues, the special counsel did not assess that it would be provable beyond a reasonable doubt and predicted that a prosecutor would have trouble convincing a jury to convict given Biden’s advanced age and addled memory.
“My assessment in the report about the relevance of the President's memory was necessary and accurate and fair. Most importantly, what I wrote is what I believe the evidence shows, and what I expect jurors would perceive and believe. I did not sanitize my explanation. Nor did I disparage the President unfairly,” Hur’s opening statement adds.
Most notably, Hur’s report asserts that Biden struggled to recall the exact year his late son, Beau Biden, passed away. A transcript of the interview obtained by The New York Times shows Hur did not ask Biden about his son, contrary to what the president suggested during his primetime press conference addressing the fallout from Hur’s report. Biden discussed Beau’s death when Hur was pressing him on keeping papers from his vice presidency, the transcript indicates.
Hur’s opening statement will cover parts of the interview he conducted with President Biden during the classified documents investigation. When Hur and his team interviewed President Biden, he could not recall telling his ghostwriter “I just found all the classified stuff downstairs,” a comment Biden made on tape after his vice presidency.
In addition, Biden said he could not recall finding classified materials at his home or retaining anything related to Afghanistan from his vice presidency. Hur’s report details how FBI agents discovered classified information at Biden’s Delaware residency and other locations.
A son of Korean immigrants, Hur spent the majority of his legal career serving in the Justice Department. He was a U.S. Attorney and a Principal Deputy Attorney General before Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed him special counsel for the Biden classified documents probe.
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