Counsel who cited Biden's 'poor memory' to be grilled

The special counsel who impugned the US president’s age and competence in his report on how Joe Biden handled classified documents is set to be questioned himself by a House committee.

Robert Hur will appear before the Judiciary Committee to take hours of questions from Republicans and Democrats on his 345-page report made public last month, in which he concluded that Biden should not face criminal charges for his handling of sensitive government information when he was vice president.

Hur’s report did cite evidence that Biden wilfully held on to highly classified information and shared it with a ghostwriter. But the special counsel devoted much of his report to explaining why he did not believe the evidence met the standard for criminal charges, partly based on five hours of interviews with the president.

Hur said it could be difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Biden intended to keep the documents, which is the standard for conviction in a criminal case. In part, he argued, jurors could be swayed that Biden’s age made him seem forgetful, and there was the possibility for “innocent explanations” for the mishandling of any records.

“Mr Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” Hur wrote in his report.

Lawmakers on both sides will try to turn the hearing to their political advantage with Hur likely to be vilified all around, by Republicans angry over his decision not to charge the president, and by Democrats for his commentary about Biden.

Republicans will work to dig further into Hur’s unflattering assessment of the president’s age and memory — a major attack line as they seek to unseat Biden. Democrats will try to paint Hur, a Trump-appointed former US attorney, as a political partisan out to help his party win a presidential election.

Republicans also hope to highlight what they say is unfair treatment by AttorneyGeneral Merrick Garland of Donald Trump, who has been charged with willfully retaining classified documents. FBI agents searched Trump’s Florida estate in 2022 and removed boxes of documents after he refused requests from the National Archives to return them.

House committees have also subpoenaed the Justice Department for records into the Biden investigation, including transcripts, notes, video, and audio files.

The report’s release triggered instant comparisons to the events of 2016, when FBI Director James Comey castigated Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton over her email practices but did not recommend pressing charges. In both the Biden and Clinton cases, the language used to characterise the subjects has been as closely scrutinised — and criticised — as the decision not to prosecute.