Sure, Special Counsel Robert Hur cleared President Biden of any wrongdoing for withholding classified documents after his vice presidency. But was the Republican lawyer still looking for a future Republican president to give him the position of federal judge (say, a re-elected and grateful Donald Trump) with the investigation? report Released on Thursday?
Hur, a Trump appointee and member of the Federalist Society, It hardly seems to be “audition” for a judicial nomination by find that “criminal charges are not warranted” against Biden, and that there is no parallel with Trump's alleged crimes involving classified information. Except for this: Hur's exoneration of Biden has been all but lost in the attention to his crassly gratuitous words about the president's age and his “diminished faculties” during Biden's five hours of testimony before investigators.
opinion columnist
Jackie Calmes
Jackie Calmes brings a critical look to the national political scene. He has decades of experience covering the White House and Congress.
Hur is too intelligent and politically savvy not to have foreseen the headlines: “An old man with a bad memory,” the newspaper bellowed. front page of the Murdochs' New York Post, citing the special counsel's report.
The report was a gift to Trump and his fellow Republicans, and directly addressed Biden's biggest weakness among voters: their doubts about the octogenarian's ability to continue doing the job. Hur admitted on the first page of the report that after a year of investigation, investigators lacked evidence file a case against the president for intentionally withholding and sharing classified information. That should have been the end.
Instead, Hur also justified not pressing charges because “Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview, as a sympathetic, well-intentioned old man with a bad memory.”
By adding that politically charged comment, Hur violated the Justice Department's “just the facts” protocols, as he also should have known given the Comey precedent: In 2018, the department general Inspector criticized then-FBI Director James B. Comey for criticizing Hillary Clinton, when she was running for president against Trump, as “extremely careless” in her handling of classified material, even as Comey announced that “no reasonable prosecutor” would come forward. charges against her.
How ironic: Trump is once again being pushed by the same Justice Department that he and Republicans say is using the government as a weapon against them.
Trump immediately issued a fundraising email accept the report as proof that Biden is not even “fit to stand trial.” (Unlike himself, who is fighting four indictments and 91 felony charges?) Echoing Trump, as always, House Republican leaders in a joint statement called Biden “unfit for the Oval Office.” (That was rich, after his own very bad week (The government's incompetence demonstrated once again that these “legislators” are unfit for Congress.)
Republicans would be crazy. No exploit Hur's words for political gain. We will see and hear them in Trump's political ads and speeches from now until November.
But Biden can counterattack in those same months. The damage has already been done, Democrats. Get over it and move on.
Surrogates can help by attesting to the president's suitability in their private dealings with him. (Last fall, Politico reported that ousted President Kevin McCarthy privately told Republican allies that Biden was “sharp and substantial” in his conversations, even as McCarthy publicly mocked the president as timid).
But ultimately, Biden's recovery requires show and say. Only he can demonstrate to skeptical voters that he stays on top of everything. The president can't get any younger, but he can do much more to face the public and let Americans judge for themselves.
To that end, Biden did well to talk before cameras in prime time on Thursday, as news of Hur's report spread, and forcefully counter it. Yes, it was shocking that he misidentified the president of Egypt as the president of Mexico, but Trump recently called the leader of Hungary the head of Turkey and mixed Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi Seven Times in Fake Rant About January 6th.
Biden was wrong to have refused For the second year, the somewhat traditional invitation, this year from CBS, to be interviewed during the Super Bowl pregame show. “We hope viewers enjoy watching what they tuned into: the game,” White House spokesman Ben LaBolt told Variety. Well, many viewers run to the refrigerator when the president appears on the screen. But that still leaves a large, diverse audience of tens of millions of people to watch Biden's wit.
To be fair, Biden is touring the country to meet with voters and show off the projects that are possible thanks to the laws he has signed. But he has had fewer press conferences than any president of the last century except Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.
Too often it appears that Biden is in a cocoon woven by staff, allowing critics and supporters to infer that he is protected from making public gaffes. But what's worse, Biden's gaffes or Trump's constant lies?
Only Biden can demonstrate his mastery of domestic and foreign affairs, thanks to his decades in public service. AND show must do it.
This way he can be re-elected. And if he does, that will mean four more years without a Republican president nominating Robert Hur to be a federal judge.
