CNN’s Jake Tapper pressed Democratic California Rep. Adam Schiff over his “outrage” toward Special Counsel Robert Hur.
Schiff accused Hur of being “deeply prejudicial” in his Feb. 8 report assessing that a jury would find President Joe Biden to be a “well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory” if he were criminally tried for privately storing classified documents. The congressman further said Hur was “naive” to believe the report would not be weaponized against Biden during an election year.
“The basic argument you’re making is that by calling President Biden a sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory, which is how he thought he would come across to a jury, that that’s political. But what part of that construct is inaccurate? I mean, I assume you think he’s sympathetic and well-meaning. He’s 81 and his memory, you know, it doesn’t seem great. It’s not horrible, but I don’t understand the outrage,” Tapper said Tuesday.
“Well it’s as simple as this,” Schiff began. “As a prosecutor, the department policy is you don’t go out of your way to essentially vilify into the reputation of someone when you’re making a declination decision. When you put in your report that’s just what’s necessary to support the conclusions of the report. So, fair game to say he was asked about these documents and didn’t recall how they got to the university [University of Pennsylvania]. It is not appropriate to engage in a subjective, generalized, essentially political assessment that is foddered during a campaign year and he knew exactly what he was doing when he chose that language.”
Schiff said he deposed former White House deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, who claimed to have a poor memory, and added that any argument that it had to do with his age was “gratuitous.” (RELATED: ‘Particularly Egregious’: CNN Commentator Blasts Democrats For ‘Attacks’ On Robert Hur)
“Well he wasn’t 81, Karl Rove,” Tapper pushed back.
“No, no he wasn’t, but would—” Schiff asked.
“But would reading the transcript, I mean, he does have—look, I don’t know if I’d be any better if somebody’s throwing names and dates at me and I was 81 years old—but, you know, he does have issues here and there. Was that 2017, was that 2016, it’s not disqualifying but he does have some memory issues,” Tapper said.
“Well that is a perfectly fair issue for a political campaign, it is not a perfectly fair issue for a prosecutor to make in a declination decision,” the congressman repeated. “You know, more than fine for Hur to say with respect to this category of documents and that, this is what the president said. But this was deliberate. It was as if Hur decided there’s not enough evidence to prosecute him, so I’m gonna politically slime him instead.”
“Okay, what he would say if he were here is I had to explain why I wasn’t prosecuting him. You’ve made that decision as a prosecutor, right? I’m not gonna take this case before a jury because I don’t know that we could win it. This person is gonna seem sympathetic or I can’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt etc.,” Tapper explained.
Hur decided not to prosecute Biden based on his memory, despite finding evidence that he willfully kept classified material in his private possession. The report found that the president could not pinpoint when he served as vice president or when his son, Beau, died of brain cancer.
Schiff said Hur’s explanation should have been that they “could not find reasonable evidence beyond a doubt” that Biden could be found guilty of the potential crimes and fulfill his “prosecutorial duty” without interfering in a presidential campaign or the election process.
“Hur understood this report would be public, he knew—” Schiff began.
“It would have been FOIA’d no matter what. It was gonna come out no matter what, right?” Tapper said.
“Well, more than that, he knew that [Attorney General Merrick] Garland was gonna release it, and he knew—” the congressman said.
“Garland had a pledge he was gonna release it,” Tapper interjected.
Democratic Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal falsely claimed to Hur numerous times that he “exonerated” Biden, which the special counsel denied.