'A disgrace': Reporters and experts say transcript reveals Hur 'lied' about Biden

12 March 2024

Robert Hur, as of Monday night the former Special Counsel who investigated President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents, will testify before Chairman Jim Jordan’s House Judiciary Committee Tuesday morning to explain his report in which he claimed the President did not remember when his son, Beau Biden, died. Hur also characterized President Biden as an “elderly man with a poor memory,” as CBS News again reported Tuesday morning:

Ahead of his appearance, the transcript of President Biden’s five-hour-long interview with Hur was released. Critics are furious, saying it proves Hur’s claims about the President were inaccurate or false.

CNN’s Manu Raju posted excerpts from the network’s report on the transcript, including one noting that President Biden “told jokes and unfurled lengthy detailed stories from his decades-long political career as he parried questions from special counsel Robert Hur and his investigators over two days last October, a transcript of the interview reviewed by CNN shows.”

National security attorney Brad Moss responded, “Democrats are going to eat Hur alive at this hearing.”

CBS News congressional correspondent Scott MacFarlane notes: “Full transcript shows President Biden does recall the date of Beau Biden’s passing…. During interview with Special Counsel.”

Former Republican political strategist Tim Miller, the popular MSNBC analyst and Bulwark host, wrote: “Not a good look for Hur…” after quoting the The Washington Post’s report:

“‘What month did Beau die? Oh God, May 30,’ he said, naming the correct day, according to a transcript of the exchange reviewed by The Washington Post.”

Zack Beauchamp, a Vox senior correspondent covering the crisis of global democracy, responding to Miller said, “I *think* Biden might be owed an apology.” He also added a screenshot from The Post’s report:

Politico senior legal affairs reporter Kyle Cheney, posting a screenshot of the transcript, appears to mock Hur:

Journalist John Harwood, also pointing to The Washington Post, citing this line: “The president doesn’t seem as absent-minded as Hur made him out to be.”

And these:

“at certain points, (Biden) corrected his interrogators when they were the ones who misspoke.”

“When Krickbaum misquoted Biden as having told his ghostwriter he found material ‘marked’ classified, Biden questioned his inaccurate addition of that word.”

Journalist Marcy Wheeler, citing The New York Times’ report, notes that Hur “tried to get a false admission from Biden in their core little theory that made no sense, he caught them doing so, and to retaliate they said he was an old geezer.”

Wheeler also points to a portion of the transcript in which Biden makes a joke involving Republican U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham. She comments, “Particularly funny, given that Biden CALLED LINDSEY OUT in the SOTU. Pretty much Hur lied about how sharp Biden was. We got the same Biden at SOTU and in this interview.”

Civil rights attorney Andrew C Laufer commented, “Hur lied. That’s really the only appropriate response.”

Jared Ryan Sears, who writes at The Pragmatic Humanist, on X offered this summation: “So President Biden was telling long stories, engaging in fluid conversation, recalled the day and month his son died, but messed up the year he was referencing a couple of times in regards to things that happened 5-9 years ago.”

“And in response, Hur made disparaging remarks, exaggerated the situation, and misled the public all because of political differences and because Hur could find nothing to prosecute Biden with,” Sears continued.

(In his prepared opening remarks for Tuesday’s hearing, Hur wrote he did not “disparage the President unfairly.”)

Sears concluded: “Hur is a disgrace for writing the report the way he did. It was against agency policy and clearly against the facts. Republicans should be embarrassed for latching onto Hur’s report to claim Biden should be removed from office.”

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