Democrats are giving little weight to the idea that special counsel Robert Hur’s testimony before Congress will dredge up concerns about President Joe Biden‘s mental acuity.
Instead, Democrats are largely declaring that Bide’s State of the Union speech last week put age and memory questions to rest. Hur’s report on Biden’s handling of classified documents concluded that the president shouldn’t be indicted in part because he’d be perceived by a jury as an “elderly man with a poor memory.”
“After the president’s strong State of the Union performance, Republicans complained that he was too strident and too angry, but not that he was too old. I think he put that to rest, and Hur won’t resurrect that,” said Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-MD), who sits on the House Judiciary Committee.
Democrats roundly attacked both the report and Hur’s role in it upon its release, calling the remarks “gratuitous” in the lengthy fallout. Now, ahead of the hearing, Democrats are saying that Biden’s fiery address to Congress finally put concerns about the president’s age behind them.
“Nobody’s going to talk about cognitively impaired now,” Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) told Biden following the speech.
But Hur might.
The prosecutor will appear before the House Judiciary Committee for a public grilling at 10 a.m. Reps. James Comer (R-KY) and Jamie Raskin (D-MD), chairman and ranking members of the House Oversight Committee, will question Hur along with members of the Judiciary Committee.
The hearing will focus on Hur’s report, but House members from each party are likely to draw a contrast with former president Donald Trump‘s classified documents case, which is being led by special counsel Jack Smith. Republicans may ask why Trump should be charged given that Biden wasn’t, while Democrats are likely to try and further dispel concerns about Biden’s memory.
“Last Wednesday, I was scared for the Hur testimony. Now I’m excited,” a House Democrat’s office told the Washington Examiner. “Biden’s performance at the State of the Union showed that report isn’t worth the paper it was written on. If Jim Jordan and James Comer want to embarrass themselves on national TV yet again, be my guest.”
Democratic strategist Brad Bannon said his party needs to focus on the big picture regardless of what Hur says.
“The proper response from the president is that he’s very happy that the special prosecutor cleared him of any wrongdoing,” Bannon said. “He should then reference the federal charges against Trump for his secret document stockpile.”
“Finally,” Bannon added, “the president or press secretary can say that he may forget small details at times, but he never forgets his commitment to protect democracy at home and abroad.”
Hur released a 388-page report in February detailing findings from a yearlong investigation into documents with classified markings that were found at Biden’s office in Washington, D.C., and home in Wilmington, Delaware.
The special counsel concluded that Biden may have willfully retained classified documents in unauthorized places and that he disclosed classified information to the ghostwriter of his 2017 memoir.
The report set off a political bomb in Washington, with its startling details suggesting the president’s memory was lacking. Biden responded by holding a nighttime press conference during which he mixed up the presidents of Egypt and Mexico, while Republicans claimed Biden’s mental acuity was inadequate for him to serve a second term.
Biden’s administration strongly defended him, with White House counsel spokesman Ian Sams making a rare appearance in the briefing room.
“Put simply, this case is closed because the facts and the evidence don’t support the theories here,” he said. “The gratuitous comments [about Biden’s memory] that respected experts say is out of line are inappropriate.”
White House officials have been noncommittal about releasing the transcripts of Biden’s interviews with Hur, a subject that is likely to be brought up during the latter’s testimony.
House Oversight Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said Monday night that he believes Hur’s testimony can be “encapsulated, I assume, in the very first sentence of his report” where the special counsel said he found no reasonable grounds to pursue criminal charges against Biden.
“So, he’s essentially exonerated in the very first sentence,” Raskin said.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
He added that he is “curious” as to what will happen during Hur’s testimony and he can only assume Republicans’ reason for calling Hur to testify is “an exercise in legislative masochism by the majority.”
“Obviously, there were some drive-by comments about President Biden’s age and his memory, and maybe they would pounce on that,” the Maryland Democrat said. “Again, it’s not relevant to his conduct, and I think that a lot of those acerbic observations are debunked by what the whole country got to see for several hours during the State of the Union address.”