EGN NEWS DESK
Robert Ok. Hur will stroll right into a Capitol Hill listening to room on Tuesday as a uniquely unifying determine in divided Washington — a person disdained by Democrats and Republicans alike.
In February, Mr. Hur, the particular counsel who investigated President Biden, concluded a yearlong investigation into Mr. Biden’s retention of delicate authorities paperwork by discovering that the president ought to face no legal expenses.
But Mr. Hur, utilizing language Mr. Biden’s workforce noticed as gratuitous, politically damaging and outdoors his job description, described the octogenarian president as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, aged man with a poor reminiscence,” prone to be acquitted by any jury.
Mr. Hur, 51, will face withering questioning from each events when he testifies earlier than the House Judiciary Committee to clarify his exoneration of Mr. Biden and the barbed prose in his 345-page report.
Republicans are prone to pepper him about his interactions with Justice Department officers and his authorized justifications for not charging Mr. Biden, regardless of discovering proof suggesting that he knew a number of the materials he possessed was secret. Democrats will nearly definitely slam him for making broad assertions about Mr. Biden’s reminiscence and attempt to undermine his authority to make such an evaluation.
“Nobody ever mentioned this was going to be straightforward,” mentioned Rod J. Rosenstein, a former deputy lawyer basic, who tapped Mr. Hur as his prime aide throughout a tumultuous interval that included the appointment of the particular counsel Robert S. Mueller III to analyze his boss on the time, President Donald J. Trump.
“They are going to ask him a number of arduous questions, however I anticipate him to restrict his solutions to the 4 corners of his report and to provide truthful solutions inside that context,” he added.
Mr. Hur will testify as a non-public citizen, not a Justice Department worker: As of Monday, he had resigned as particular counsel and can be represented by a non-public lawyer, William A. Burck, in line with a division spokesman, who didn’t clarify Mr. Hur’s purpose for doing so.
Mr. Burck, former deputy counsel within the George W. Bush White House, didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
The political stakes of Tuesday’s listening to, whereas nonetheless excessive, can be on show days after Mr. Biden delivered a fiery protection of his presidency throughout a State of the Union speech that appeared to handle a number of the considerations about age and psychological health raised by the particular counsel.
“Thirty-two million Americans noticed him in command throughout his State of the Union handle,” mentioned Anthony Coley, who was Attorney General Merrick B. Garland’s spokesman when Mr. Hur was appointed in January 2023. “Those folks don’t want an interview transcript or testimony from somebody they’ve by no means heard of to reply a query that Biden handled final week.”
It shouldn’t be uncommon for witnesses in federal circumstances to quote their defective recollections in interviews with investigators, notably about occasions that occurred years earlier. But Mr. Hur included references to Mr. Biden’s reminiscence that didn’t relate on to retaining labeled paperwork — together with the president’s battle to recall the yr (2015) when his son Beau died.
Mr. Hur, a registered Republican who has steered away from partisan politics throughout a two-decade profession as a prosecutor, was chosen, partly, due to his fame for calmly dealing with the stress of high-wire investigations and inside division politics.
The Hur report underlines the challenges of deploying particular counsels, a transfer supposed to protect prosecutors from political meddling however typically ensuing within the launch of damaging details about individuals who have been cleared of legal wrongdoing.
Current and former division officers mentioned Mr. Hur’s unvarnished narrative was in all probability motivated by self-preservation. He wanted to justify his determination to not cost Mr. Biden, they mentioned, when the federal government had indicted Mr. Trump over his dealing with and retention of presidency paperwork — despite the fact that the costs in opposition to Mr. Trump allege much more critical transgressions.
“If the goal of a particular counsel investigation has no complaints concerning the investigation, then it means the investigation is probably going a cupcake investigation,” mentioned John P. Fishwick Jr., who served as U.S. lawyer for the Western District of Virginia from 2015 to 2017.
“Mr. Hur bought the combination good, as Republicans say he was too tender and the Biden workforce says Hur took low cost photographs,” he mentioned.
