OAN’s Brooke Mallory
10:48 AM – Wednesday, March 13, 2024
Tuesday’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee was provided by Robert K. Hur, the special counsel who looked into President Biden’s possession of secret documents after he left as vice president under former President Barack Obama.
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Hur faced intense questioning from Republicans on his determination that there was not enough evidence to prosecute Biden. Democrats, on the other hand, criticized him for making derogatory comments regarding Biden’s mental capacity in his report. These remarks included referring to him as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” and someone with “diminished faculties in advancing age.”
Here’s a few takeaways:
Both sides launched attacks against Hur.
Certain portions of Hur’s report did not sit well with members of either party. Republicans expressed their displeasure that Biden was not prosecuted, citing the criminal indictment against former President Donald J. Trump, which charges him with deliberately holding onto classified national security information. Meanwhile, Democrats said that Hur had broken Justice Department policy by disparaging Biden’s mental capacity.
Representative Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), claimed that Hur had purposefully supplied fodder to “play into the Republicans’ narrative that the president is unfit for office because he is senile.” He pointed to Biden’s “animated” delivery of the State of the Union speech as evidence that this description was untrue. However, many social media users chimed in and expressed that it seemed like Biden took an Adderall pill or some other kind of “upper” drug before the address, since his upbeat energy was untypical of him and he looked to have dilated pupils.
Johnson accused Hur, a former Trump political appointee, of “doing everything you can do to get President Trump re-elected so that you can get appointed as a federal judge or perhaps to another position in the Department of Justice,” after forcing him to admit that he is a registered Republican.
“Partisan politics had no place whatsoever in my work, it had no place in the investigative steps that I took, it had no place in the decision that I made, and it had no place in a single word of my report,” Hur asserted.
On the other hand, Representative Tom Tiffany (R-Wis) claimed that Hur was shielding Biden from what he perceived to be a politicized double standard by the Justice Department.
“I want to thank you for the work you did as far as you could, but unfortunately, you are part of the Praetorian Guard that guards the swamp out here in Washington, D.C., protecting the elites — and Joe Biden is part of that company of the elites,” Tiffany said.
The session was mostly dominated by attempts to gain political points.
Other than Biden’s mental cognition, Hur’s evidence was mostly clear during the hearing. Republicans highlighted how Biden is a criminal who has gotten away with his crimes because, in the words of Representative Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), “the elevator doesn’t go all the way to the top” and he is a “senile cooperator.”
Biden’s allies tried to insinuate that Hur’s report represented an exoneration for the president as soon as it was made public last month. According to their account, Biden was “innocent,” as Hur claims that he was unable to gather enough evidence to prosecute the president.
Following her claim that Hur cleared the president, Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) attempted to move on with her remarks. “I did not ‘exonerate’ him—that word does not appear in the report,” Hur said, shooting back. Under questioning from both sides, he reiterated that fact numerous times.
Throughout the entire hearing, Hur remained motionless and seldom objected to questions from congressmen, even when their claims ran counter to what he had written or stated, unless he was personally defending himself.
Republicans, such as Representative Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.), utilized time to compare the improper possession of classified documents by Biden and Trump. However, Hur remained silent and repeated the findings of his report, which stated that there are “several material distinctions.”
During the following eight months of the 2024 presidential campaign, when Biden will confront Trump again, some of the most heated debates will most likely center on the president’s age and cognitive ability.
Concerns about Biden’s age among voters from both parties have plagued him for months. At 81, he is already the oldest president to be elected. Although he and his supporters have downplayed those worries, Hur’s report detailed memory issues that he experienced during a five-hour interview.
Republicans continued to highlight the president’s mental cognition on multiple occasions on Tuesday, but Hur would not discuss anything beyond what was written in his report. Democrats, meanwhile, fiercely disputed Hur’s claim that he was not acting politically.
“You were not born yesterday,” said Representative Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.). “You understood exactly what you were doing. It was a choice.”
Hur’s denial that he cleared Biden will be “political gold” for the president’s opponents in the upcoming 2024 election.
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