Delayed Reckoning
Where does Robert Hur go to get his reputation back?
The former federal prosecutor and special counsel investigating Joe Biden's retention of classified documents had been a target of vitriol from Democrats after the Justice Department released his report in February 2024. While Hur had recommended against the DOJ bringing criminal charges against Biden once he was out of office, his report describes the then-president coming across 'as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory' during his interview with Hur's team.
At the time, the White House and Democrats accused Hur of engaging in politics, assisting Republicans who had been trying to make Biden's age an issue in the presidential campaign. Even Biden himself expressed his anger at Hur during a press conference hours after the report was made public.
We all know what happened next. On June 27, on a debate stage in Atlanta, the whole world would see Biden as an aging president who frequently failed to speak audibly or coherently. Within a month, Biden had dropped out of the race, unable to gloss over what happened at the debate or ignore the increasing number of Democrats declaring publicly he was unfit to run again. Hur's description, once derided as unfair and partisan, had become impossible to deny.
Hur was further validated last Friday when Axios published clips of the audio recordings from the interview. Listen to the clips to judge for yourself, but the audio strikingly captures Biden struggling to answer questions, leaving long gaps between words, searching for facts and dates, and otherwise sounding exactly as Hur described him.
These new audio clips come after weeks of promotion of a new book out today from Axios reporter Alex Thompson and CNN anchor Jake Tapper, Original Sin, that offers new reporting about what the authors describe as a 'cover-up' of Biden's cognitive decline by Democratic Party figures and Biden's inner circle. The book has prompted discussion and some soul-searching from Democrats about everything from Biden's decision to run for reelection in the first place to his reluctant choice to withdraw. One Democrat is even reconsidering how he treated the sober and publicity-shy prosecutor who merely reported what he saw. (Hur, by the way, declined to answer questions for this column.)
Tommy Vietor, a popular progressive podcast host who was once a trusted White House aide to Barack Obama, admitted in a post on X on Saturday that he had reevaluated his initial attack on Hur.
'I found the context about the Hur report to be some of the most interesting/revelatory information in ORIGINAL SIN,' Vietor posted. 'At the time, Hur's comments about Biden being an 'elderly man with a poor memory' seemed like Jim Comey-style inappropriate editorializing about a non-charging decision. However, the book made me realize how important that context was for Hur in explaining his decision NOT to charge Biden, and I now feel that many of the attacks on Hur, including by me, weren't totally fair.'
As my colleague Sarah Isgur and I wrote at the time, Hur was obligated to explain to the attorney general in his report why he would not recommend charging Biden. Hur himself testified on Capitol Hill in March 2024 that he based part of this recommendation on the concerns he had that Biden's memory issues would make it difficult for the Department of Justice to win a criminal case.
'My assessment in the report about the relevance of the president's memory was necessary and accurate and fair,' Hur said in his testimony. 'Most importantly, what I wrote is what I believe the evidence shows, and what I expect jurors would perceive and believe. I did not sanitize my explanation. Nor did I disparage the president unfairly. I explained to the attorney general my decision and the reasons for it. That's what I was required to do.'
This aspect of the report was not merely the fulfillment of the special prosecutor's duty but a red flag for anyone still in denial about the bigger truth: Biden was an octogenarian who had clearly declined while holding one of the most stressful and high-pressure jobs in the world. Democrats' dismissal of Hur's report as partisan agitprop delayed the reckoning the party needed to have.
And by noting these uncomfortable facts about Biden, Hur and the Justice Department incurred the wrath of many liberals who were simultaneously seeking from the same justice system some form of deliverance from Donald Trump. Of course, Trump had done so much in both his first term and four-year interregnum to undercut faith in the institutions of criminal justice, infecting wide swaths of the Republican Party and conservative media. Meanwhile, overreach and malfeasance on the part of some liberal prosecutors have further eroded public trust wherever the law and politics come into contact.
It's too much to hope that in this current moment of self-reflection by Democrats that partisans on both sides will recognize the cautionary tale in the panic over Hur's report. But they should.
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