Special counsel grilled over Biden memory claim
The special counsel who investigated Joe Biden's handling of classified documents defended his controversial remarks about the US president's memory on Tuesday and his decision not to file criminal charges. Robert Hur's testimony before a congressional committee quickly turned into a partisan affair with Democrats and Republicans seizing on the contrasting behaviour of Biden and Donald Trump, who has been indicted for his own mishandling of top-secret documents. Republicans have particularly focused on Hur's comments in the report about Biden's memory, hoping to reignite the age issue for the 81-year-old Democrat ahead of an expected rematch against 77-year-old Republican Trump in the November presidential election. In his 350-page report released in February, Hur declined to recommend criminal charges against Biden and – in a politically explosive section – described him as "a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory." "My task was to determine whether the president retained or disclosed national defence information 'willfully' – meaning, knowingly and with the intent to do something the law forbids," Hur told the House Judiciary Committee. "For that reason, I had to consider the president's memory and overall mental state. "My assessment in the report about the relevance of the president's memory was necessary and accurate and fair," Hur said. "I did not sanitise my explanation. Nor did I disparage the president unfairly." Democratic lawmakers pushed back against Hur, a registered Republican, accusing him of making "gratuitous" remarks about Biden's memory and injecting himself into the presidential campaign. "You cannot tell me you're so naive as to think your words would not have created a political firestorm?" said Representative Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California. "You were not born yesterday. You understood exactly what you were doing," Schiff said. "It was a choice. You certainly didn't have to include that language." Hur insisted that "partisan politics had no place whatsoever in my work." "Politics played no part," he added. Representative Matt Gaetz and other Republican lawmakers contrasted the decision not to charge Biden with the indictment of Trump for mishandling top-secret documents after leaving the White House. "Biden and Trump should have been treated equally," Gaetz said. "They weren't. And that is the double standard that I think a lot of Americans are concerned about." Representative Jamie Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland, countered that the circumstances surrounding the mishandling of classified documents by Biden and Trump were not comparable. "President Biden did not assert executive privilege or claim absolute immunity from presidential crimes," Raskin said. "He did not hide boxes of documents under his bed or in a bathtub." Trump has been charged in Florida by a different special counsel, Jack Smith, with hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home and obstructing the efforts of the FBI to retrieve them. To make their points, both Republican and Democratic lawmakers repeatedly played video clips during Tuesday's hearing of Biden and Trump making verbal flubs in public appearances and interviews. Transcripts of Biden's interviews with Hur were released meanwhile which appear to give a more balanced picture of their encounter than either the president or the prosecutor gave at the time the report was released. Whereas Hur said Biden could not remember "even within several years" when his son Beau died of brain cancer, the president in fact remembered the exact date and month, but not the year. Biden also asked aloud at one point when Trump was elected president and twice about the dates of his vice presidency. The rest of the transcript often shows a spirited back and forth between the prosecutor and the president as they discuss the handling of classified documents while Biden was vice president. The garrulous Biden often frequently joked and digressed into detailed stories, including one about an archery contest during a visit to Mongolia and others about his Corvette car, kept in the garage where some of the documents were found. (AFP)