A Partisan Hit Job on President Biden

[Celerity]

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2024-02-09-partisan-hit-job-president-biden/

President Joe Biden delivers remarks in response to the release of the special counsel’s report in the classified documents case, February 8, 2024, in the Diplomatic Room at the White House.

Special Counsel Robert Hur, in the course of explaining why he was not filing charges against President Biden for taking home some classified documents, wrote a 345-page report with gratuitous and nasty asides about Biden’s age and memory. It reads like something written by the Trump campaign as a hit job. You’d almost think Hur was a Republican operative. Well, in fact Hur was Donald Trump’s appointee to serve as U.S. attorney for Maryland, a post he held from 2018 to 2021. Before that, Hur was principal associate deputy attorney general in the Trump Justice Department. He is a self-identified Republican.

So why did Attorney General Merrick Garland appoint a partisan Republican as special counsel to investigate President Biden, when dozens of other well-qualified people were available? Good question. Garland, once again, has proven to be Biden’s worst appointee. Out of a colossally naïve sense of fairness, at a time when Republicans are out for blood, Garland also dithered for more than a year before appointing Special Counsel Jack Smith, in November 2022, to investigate Trump’s most flagrant and prosecutable breach of the law, his attempted coup of January 6, 2021, where all the evidence was in plain view. Garland acted reluctantly only after the House Select Committee on January 6th did all the investigative work and provided both the pressure and the road map.

Based on the facts, Hur should have written a short report pointing out that Biden’s actions did not rise to the level of criminal offenses. That, after all, was his conclusion and should have been the headline. Instead, Hur delivered a book-length indictment of Biden’s age and memory, going out of his way to offer politically damaging and snarky assertions, and quotable one-liners. Explaining, disingenuously, why a jury would be unlikely to convict (a separate question from Hur’s own conclusion that Biden had not committed an indictable offense), Hur imagines that a jury would view Biden as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” But these are Hur’s own words; the jury is imaginary. Hur can’t quite make these patronizing assertions himself, so he puts them in the mind of a jury of his own invention. You can just imagine Hur savoring the gimmick, the language, and relishing the political damage.



The timing was also suspicious. Hur picked a moment when Republicans were reeling from their divisions over border policy and Ukraine; their House and Senate leaders were losing the confidence of their respective caucuses; and the toadying to Trump had become its own embarrassment. The report put the spotlight back on Biden’s vulnerabilities and Democratic divisions. This document, as planned, led to a media feeding frenzy. At a hastily called press conference, Biden expressed outrage that Hur would contend that he didn’t remember when his son Beau died, an assertion as implausible as it is deliberately insulting. On the whole, Biden did not do badly on his feet, except when he momentarily referred to Egyptian president Sisi as the president of Mexico. But Biden gave a good accounting of the complex Gaza diplomacy, and the Mexico slip pales compared with Trump’s prolonged confusion of Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi.

snip

[sprinkleeninow]

1. One very apropos word: "gimicky". nt

[crickets]

2. The timing was completely intentional. No doubt at all. nt

[Blue Owl]

3. Here ya go Merrick -- he's all yours:

[Buns_of_Fire]

5. We all know TSF enjoys making fun of the disabled.

Is this his impression of the chronically constipated?

Boy needs more fiber in his diet. I recommend asbestos.

[Buns_of_Fire]

4. Robert Hur: 2024's James Comey. nt