Finished the report. Robert Hur's writing is extremely lengthy and repetitive on Biden's notecards and notebooks and stance on the 2009 surge in US troops for Afghanistan, well-beyond what is needed to explain why the Department of Justice won't bring charges against Biden. Why all this verbiage?
The situation: From November 2022 to January 2023, Biden's lawyers and the FBI found secret government documents in Biden's old office at the Biden Center and then in his home. Biden and his team reported it and informed the Department of Justice that they would comply fully with any interview and search. An FBI search of Biden's home revealed 12 one-page documents on the premises.
Special Counsel Robert Hur's report says that this included a folder of classified documents, found inside a box in the Biden garage. The folder held secret information on the 2009 troop surge in Afghanistan.
The box contained, among other items, old campaign documents, a short-term vacation lease, a memo about furniture at the Naval Observatory, talking points for speeches, empty folders, a 1995 document about Syracuse Law's 100th Anniversary, and a binder of material about Biden's deceased son, Beau.
Joe Biden had no recollection of packing the box and Hur notes that a vice-president's office is packed up hurriedly at the end of a term to make way for the incoming administration, and the box is filled files that are random and unrelated.
Hur claims that in 2017, Biden bragged to his ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer, about how Biden had the Afghanistan troop surge files. Hur says that Biden illegally kept classified documents to later use in a book to prove his prescience about Afghanistan being unwinnable and pointless and bolster Biden's reputation for being against the Afghanistan campaign.
This assertion is simply untrue despite Hur repeating over 20 times that Biden claimed to have found classified information in his basement and shared it with Mark Zwonitzer. The discussion between Biden and Zwonitzer was recorded and transcribed, and the relevant extract form transcript is shown in Hur's report.
Joe Biden to Mark Zwonitzer:
So this was—I, early on, in ’09—I just found all the classified stuff downstairs—I wrote the President a handwritten 40-page memorandum arguing against deploying additional troops to Iraq—I mean, to Afghanistan—on the grounds that it wouldn’t matter, that the day we left would be like the day before we arrived.
It's obvious that Biden is not sharing "the classified" documents in the garage box with Zwonitzer, but rather a handwritten letter that Biden wrote to President Obama protesting the Afghanistan troop surge, a memo that was confidential and classified in 2009, but certainly not by 2017 or 2023 as the troop surge is a matter of public record.
Hur insists that Biden is sharing the Afghanistan files. Hur repeats his accusation throughout his report. Hur repeatedly concedes that his accusation regarding Biden keeping the Afghanistan documents deliberately and knowingly is unprovable, unprosecutable and that no jury would be persuaded by it: the box and its contents were damaged and surrounded by household junk which shows the file wasn't reviewed until the FBI found it during the search that Biden and his lawyers asked the FBI to make.
Hur repeatedly says that Biden divulged classification by keeping his personal notebooks, but then concedes that no prosecution could convince a jury to convict because every former president has taken their diaries with them upon leaving the White House.
Hur repeatedly says that Biden divulged confidential information to Zwonitzer by reading diaries containing classified information to his ghostwriter, but also repeatedly cites instances where Biden, in a recording or transcript of a Biden-Zwonitzer discussion, skips over classified sections of a notebook entry, saying these would prevent a jury from seeking criminal intent or action, then, oddly, says Hur can't prove that the classified sections that Biden read were classified.
The end result: Hur presents a flimsy, unprovable case against Biden, declares repeatedly that across 383 pages that his case is flimsy and unprovable.
The last five pages are a letter from Biden's White House lawyers pointing out that the case is exactly as weak as Hur says it is. Biden's lawyers also point out that "all the classified stuff" is clearly in reference to the "handwritten 40-page memorandum" and not the Afghanistan file that was in the garage next to a dog crate, a dog bed, a broken lamp, a bean bag, a treadmill and gardening soil.
Hur's report, in the early pages, declares: "Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen". The report to follow has numerous variations on this claim.
But Hur also writes throughout: "we have found a number of innocent explanations", "These facts do not support a conclusion that Mr. Biden willfully retained the marked classified documents in these binders", "we cannot prove that Mr. Biden retained these classified documents willfully", "the evidence does not suggest either that Mr. Biden retained the classified documents inside them willfully, or that the documents contain national defense information" and other such variations.
Journalists keep quoting the first remark while ignoring all the others. This seems to be Hur's intention, wishing to emphasize all evidence for Biden's guilt in easily quotable passages that enable the evidence of Biden's innocence to be ignored by FOX News and the like.
Hur's comments on Biden's memory:
Robert Hur: In addition. Mr. Biden's memory was significantly limited, both during his recorded interviews with the ghostwriter in 2017, and in his interview with our office in 2023. And his cooperation with our investigation, including by reporting to the government that the Afghanistan documents were in his Delaware garage, will likely convince some jurors that he made an innocent mistake, rather than acting willfully-that is, with intent to break the law-as the statute requires.
Robert Hur: We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Eiden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory. Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him-by then a former president well into his eighties-of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.
Robert Hur: Mr. Biden's memory also appeared to have significant limitations-both at the time he spoke to Zwonitzer in 2017, as evidenced by their recorded conversations, and today, as evidenced by his recorded interview with our office. Mr. Biden's recorded conversations with Zwonitzer from 2017 are often painfully slow, with Mr. Biden struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries.
Robert Hur: In his interview with our office, Mr. Biden's memory was worse. He did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended ("if it was 2013 - when did I stop being Vice President?"), and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began ("in 2009, am I still Vice President?"). He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died. Biden and his memory appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him. Among other things, he mistakenly said he "had a real difference" of opinion with General Karl Eikenberry, when, in fact, Eikenberry was an ally whom Mr. Biden cited approvingly in his Thanksgiving memo to President Obama.
Robert Hur: Mr. Biden will likely present himself to the jury, as he did during his interview with our office, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.
Robert Hur: For these jurors, Mr. Biden's apparent lapses and failures in February and April 2017 will likely appear consistent with the diminished faculties and faulty memory he showed in Zwonitzer's interview recordings and in our interview of him.
Let's look at how Robert Hur treats other interview subjects in this report when they don't recall specific events or dates from a few or many years previous:
Robert Hur: Cynthia Hogan, Mr. Biden's first Counsel, developed policies and procedures for the proper handling and storage of classified materials in the Office of the Vice President... When interviewed, Hogan did not recall the August 2010 meeting with Mr. Biden. She did, however. identify her handwritten talking points on "best practices." Even though she did not remember their content, she identified her handwriting and said she likely created them in advance of her meeting with Mr. Biden.
Robert Hur: The detailee did not recall the ultimate disposition of the notecards or whether the discussion percolated up to Mr. Biden.
Robert Hur: Vice President, John McGrail was going to meet with Mr. Biden to address the issue... McGrail did not recall any such conversation, and indeed, said he did not remember anything about the notecard project or about concerns that Mr. Biden's notecards could contain classified information.
Robert Hur: During his interview, McGrail did not recall these e-mails or any discussions about the executive order or the Reagan diaries, except that he recalled having conversations about getting Mr. Biden's "security clearance" extended so Mr. Biden could access classified material after the vice presidency.253 According to McGrail, he could not recall having any discussions about Mr. Biden's notecards, notes, or diaries containing classified information.
Robert Hur: McGrail's memory of these events could well have faded over the course of more than 6 years.
Robert Hur: No staffers recalled removing or packing material from the desk before movers removed it from the Naval Observatory.
Robert Hur: No one involved recalled packing or moving papers or files belonging to Mr. Biden.
Robert Hur: The executive assistant could not recall how they determined what to unpack versus what to leave in boxes.
When Biden doesn't recall something with immediate exactitude, Hur treats it as a sign of cognitive decline; when anyone else has no memory at all regarding the situation, Hur dismisses it.
This is clearly deliberate, an effort to smear Biden in a highly selective and sabotaging fashion and beyond Hur's flimsy, self-admittedly flimsy argument against Biden.
Let's note that on this forum, in this very thread, plenty of posters have made incoherent, self-contradictory comments or made posts that demonstrate a poor recall of what they wrote in previous posts or even in previous paragraphs or sentences.
Those same posters have protested, not unreasonably, that they should not be called liars or said to be experiencing cognitive decline for lacking the photographic memory of Data from STAR TREK.
I myself cannot remember in this moment what year my grandfather died; in my mind, he has been dead for so long that his death is simply 'now'. I can't remember what year I graduated from university or grad school and would probably get the number wrong; I sometimes can't even get my own age right.
Lots of people on this forum would call me crazy, but nobody would call me out for having a poor memory. They would probably say that there are things that have lodged in my mind and things that haven't.
I am not saying that Joe Biden is not experiencing memory problems or cognitive decline because that is a subject that calls for more attention and consideration than what Robert Hur's report provides. I will have to contemplate that and come back to it later.
However, Robert Hur's reasoning for smearing Biden throughout a report exonerating Biden is clumsy when it isn't inane and laughable.
What were Hur's motives? He wanted to write something long, tedious and boring that most people wouldn't bother to read. He wanted to write something where the disingenuous could seize upon Biden-condemning quotes while ignoring the Biden-absolving quotes. He wanted to write 383 pages of content that could be used as content to upset and frighten susceptible Democrat voters whose anxieties are triggered by Republican clickbait.
I guess I'm mostly with QuinnSlidr now that I've read the report: this report is a foolish, clumsy, long-winded smear with extremely thin examples to attack Biden's integrity and memory... but does Biden have memory issues?
Just speaking for myself, I would prefer to return to the subject when better-informed. There are plenty of neurologists weighing in on the subject.
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