Special Counsel Robert Hur testified for some five hours before the House Judiciary Committee yesterday on his investigation into President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents over his too long career in public life. I have posted the Washington Post’s YouTube video of the hearing at the bottom. At the same time, transcripts of Hur’s interview of Biden in the investigation were released: October 8 (99 pages) and October 9 (157 pages).
Mr. Techno Fog provided his hot take on the transcripts here (“confusion, evasion, and outright lies”). David Harsanyi cut to the chase in the Federalist column “Turns out Biden lied.” The Free Beacon’s Andrew Kerr reviews both Hur’s testimony and the Biden transcripts in “Interview Transcript, Congressional Testimony Shed Light on Biden’s Memory Lapses During Classified Doc Investigation.”
Hur confined his testimony to the four corners of the lengthy report he submitted to Attorney General Merrick Garland. Whenever he was asked about the facts of the case, he referred to the report’s findings. He demonstrated perfect poise and complete mastery of the case as set forth in his report.
It should go without saying that Hur knew his case, but contrast Hur’s grasp of the case with Robert Mueller’s failure to launch at the comparable hearing held following his Russiagate investigation. To put it charitably, Mueller appeared to be a figurehead who performed at best as an innocent bystander to an investigation run and conducted by others (e.g., Andrew Weissmann). Trump fans who harbor lingering animosity against Attorney General William Barr don’t understand that Mueller’s investigation would still be alive if it weren’t for Barr.
The House Democrats sought to impute a finding of “complete exoneration” of Biden to Hur. Hur begged to disagree. Hur was admirably noncompliant in the face of the Democrats’ efforts to put words in his mouth. The Free Beacon’s video of highlights (below) shows that “complete exoneration” misses the mark. As Hur put it in his opening statement, Hur “identified evidence that the President willfully retained classified materials after the end of his vice presidency, when he was a private citizen.” This evidence contradicted everything Biden himself has said in public about the case, although lying to the public is not a crime. It is standard operating procedure.
Hur was criticized for resting his recommendation of non-prosecution on Biden’s senility. Hur explained that he was required to “show [his] work” supporting his recommendation of non-prosecution. Hur reminded me of how I showed my work in solving high school physics problems. I began with the answer and worked back from there.
In Hur’s case, the answer was non-prosecution. A voice in his head from the film Network must have counseled caution: “Don’t do it, buddy! You’re a young man! You got your whole life ahead of you!” Hur’s explanation of the difficulty of obtaining a guilty verdict in the case was little more than absurd (as was his distinction of the Biden case from the Trump case).
In the course of his overlong political career, Biden has been a serial violator of the national security law. He is heedless to it. His misconduct is egregious. And he is a senescent dolt with the possible reservation that in some instances he may be senile like a fox. I don’t recall when “I don’t recall” was ever so plausible.
I would like to include one positive observation in these remarks. I was impressed by the demeanor of two congressmen whose names I had not even heard before. I don’t know anything else about them except what I saw yesterday. I am referring to Republican Ben Cline of Virginia and Democrat Glenn Ivey of Maryland.
However, yesterday’s hearing was incredibly depressing. It represents the dire condition of our politics. We have clownish Democrats volubly insisting on the things which are not. We have the exhibition of the two-tiered system of justice that Democrats have fashioned to resolve the problem of Donald Trump and other annoyances. We have the continuing exposure of the mental incompetence of the president of the United States. We have the mainstream press acting as the Democrats’ public relations arm.
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