George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley derided the House Democrats’ performance during the testimony of former Special Counsel Robert Hur on Tuesday.
Hur testified before the House Judiciary Committee about his report, which meticulously documented how President Joe Biden had broken laws against mishandling classified documents, but he nonetheless declined to recommend prosecution because a jury would be unlikely to indict and convict such a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
House Democrats, nonetheless, attempted to whitewash Joe Biden’s criminal mishandling of classified documents, such as Rep. Jayapal (D-WA) insisting that Robert Hur had “exonerated” the president of wrongdoing, a claim that Hur steadfastly denied.
On the other side of the aisle, Rep. Gaetz (R-FL) was highly dissatisfied with Hur’s rationale for declining prosecution of Joe Biden, claiming that the former special counsel was invoking a non-existent “senile cooperator theory.”
Turley provided further commentary on the Hur hearings.
“Well, I thought the Republicans did a particularly good job today,” Turley said on Fox News’ “America Reports.” “Often the Democrats are way ahead in framing of hearings, but at points the Democrats seemed almost a border on the delusional. When you had Hur say ‘I did not exonerate the president’ and then Democrats would say ‘okay, so you exonerated the president’ and he would say ‘no, I didn’t’ and they would say ‘thank you for that, with that exoneration.’ So for a lot of people watching, they probably kept on having to sort of reverse and see if they missed something here.”
“The fact is that Hur tried over and over again to distinguish between his findings, which is that he was not confident he could convict if he did bring any charges, and the statement of Democrats that the president was cleared,” Turley added.
Turley noted that the report’s facts make it shocking that no charges have been brought against Biden.
“But out of this hearing, it came really some quite shocking observations. I mean, at the end you’re sort of still wondering why he wasn’t charged, including Hur saying ‘look, we have audio tape of the president referring to the fact that he found classified evidence in his basement.’ Well, okay, that seems like full knowledge. But he kept on coming back to the fact that I think a jury might have been persuaded that this is a nice, elderly man with a faulty memory,” he continued.
Hur decided not to bring charges against Biden, despite discovering evidence that he reportedly knew he had sensitive information in his private residence, because a jury would regard him as a “well-meaning” old guy with a “poor memory.”
Biden falsely described Hur’s conversation with him, telling reporters at a surprise news conference that Hur questioned him about his son’s death. The transcript of the interview reveals that the president, not Hur, brought up Beau Biden’s death.
Turley provided more commentary on X:
Hur just confirmed that Biden had documents marked classified from when he was a senator. Some of those documents reportedly came from a secure SCIF, which would likely require Biden himself to remove them.
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) March 12, 2024
“Hur just confirmed that Biden had documents marked classified from when he was a senator. Some of those documents reportedly came from a secure SCIF, which would likely require Biden himself to remove them,” he noted.
Robert Hur’s refusal to bring charges against President Joe Biden for his documented violations of classified documents law, which the intelligence community is now investigating for potential exposure of national security secrets in a “damage assessment,” is not only a dereliction of duty, a usurpation of the adjudication of justice by a jury of one’s peers, but it is also an attack on the institution of the rule of law.
The United States was founded on legal principles arising out of the many struggles throughout the history of Western Civilization to hold elites accountable to the same standard as the masses. The principle of “blind justice” is under full assault in the United States today, and Robert Hur is an accomplice to that regressive and dangerous trend.
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