Special counsel Robert Hur said the White House requested certain changes to his report on President Joe Biden‘s handling of classified documents during his testimony on Tuesday.
Hur said a draft of the report was provided to the White House counsel and members of Biden’s personal counsel team “for their review.” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) asked Hur if the White House tried to “weigh in” on Hur’s investigation and “frankly, get the report changed?”
“They did request certain edits and changes to the draft report,” Hur said in response.
One reason Hur said he did not recommend criminal charges was because Biden’s memory was “significantly limited” and he would come across to a jury as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
Ahead of the report’s release, White House spokesman Ian Sams said the president would not seek redactions of the report and indicated the president had no privilege review requests. However, a letter dated Feb. 5 included at the very end of Hur’s report said the White House disagreed with Hur on comments regarding Biden’s memory loss, asking him to alter references to that matter in his report.
Jordan presented two letters, including one to Attorney General Merrick Garland, in which Jordan said Biden’s legal counsel raised the “same concerns” about including remarks on Biden’s memory loss in the report.
“So you’re familiar with the fact that they went over your head?” Jordan asked.
“They were certainly entitled to write whatever letters they wished to Mr. [Bradley] Weinsheimer and to the attorney general,” Hur responded.
“I just find that interesting,” Jordan shot back. “… Do you find that interesting?”
Hur responded that Attorney General Merrick Garland, as part of special counsel regulations, had oversight authority over his investigation and that he had communicated numerous times with the White House over the course of the one-year investigation.
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Hur’s testimony comes after the transcript of his interview with the president was released early Tuesday morning, in which it is detailed that Biden struggled to remember key dates and said he was unfamiliar with how classified documents ended up in his possession.
Both Republicans and Democrats on the Judiciary Committee, though for different political reasons, spent much of the hearing so far contrasting Hur’s findings with those of special counsel Jack Smith, who recommended criminal charges for former President Donald Trump for his own mishandling of classified documents.