Robert Hur, the special counsel who investigated President Joe Biden‘s handling of classified documents, declared during a congressional hearing Tuesday that he did not “exonerate” the president despite declining to bring charges against him.
Hur’s comment came in response to questions from Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), a member of the House Judiciary Committee, who claimed that Hur’s special counsel report, released last month after a yearlong investigation, was indeed an “exoneration” of the president.
Hur wrote in the report that he found evidence Biden willfully retained classified documents after he left the vice presidency and that Biden “risked serious damage to America’s national security.” While unauthorized retention of classified material is against federal law, Hur also said he did not bring charges because he did not have evidence that met a reasonable doubt threshold.
Jayapal observed that in Hur’s report, the special counsel wrote that “no criminal charges are warranted in this matter.”
“So this lengthy, expensive, and independent investigation resulted in a complete exoneration,” Jayapal said, before diving into a question about specific statutes governing classified material.
Hur took issue with Jayapal’s comment, asserting that he did not clear Biden’s name of all wrongdoing in the manner she had suggested.
“I need to go back and make sure that I take note of a word that you used, ‘exoneration.’ That is not a word that was used in the report, and that’s not part of my task as a prosecutor,” Hur said.
Jayapal interjected, “You exonerated him.”
“I did not exonerate him,” Hur shot back. “That word does not appear in the report.”
Committee ranking member Jerry Nadler (D-NY) similarly declared in his opening statement at the start of the hearing that Hur’s report was a “complete and total exoneration” of Biden.
Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-CA), another committee member, offered a chance for Hur to answer directly on the matter, asking, “Did you completely exonerate President Biden?”
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“That is not what my report does,” Hur said.
Kiley also asked Hur if a “reasonable juror” could have come to the conclusion that Biden should be convicted for storing classified materials in unauthorized places, to which Hur replied in the affirmative.
