Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday defended Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report in which he made controversial comments about President Joe Biden’s memory, saying it would’ve been “absurd” to censor content explaining the special counsel’s conclusion.
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When asked at a press conference about his decision not to censor Hur’s report on Biden’s handling of classified documents, Garland said no one from the White House had been critical to him and recalled that, when he was appointed, Biden told him “he wanted me to serve as the lawyer for the American people, not the lawyer for the president,” NBC News reported.
Thursday’s comments were the first time Garland addressed the controversy over Hur’s report, which drew criticism from Biden’s lawyers, who said the report violated the Justice Department’s “policy and practice by pejoratively characterizing uncharged conduct.”
The report, made public in February, did not recommend charges against Biden out of concern that it would be hard to get a jury to convict him as Biden could portray himself as an “elderly man with a poor memory.”
“The idea that an attorney general would edit or redact or censor the special counsel’s explanation for why the special counsel reached the decision that special counsel did? That’s absurd,” Garland said Thursday.
Garland appointed Hur in January 2023 to investigate whether charges should be brought against Biden for his handling of classified documents that were found in his home and office. Special counsels report directly to the attorney general but generally don’t operate out of the day-to-day purview of the Justice Department, and the attorney general is expected to “give great weight to the special counsel’s views,” the Associated Press reported. In the report, Hur concluded it would be difficult to prove at trial that Biden willfully retained the classified documents, and he made a number of references to Biden’s memory that the president and Democrats were critical of, including saying his memory was “significantly limited” and it would be hard to convict him of a “a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.” Hur’s report revived concerns over Biden’s age and memory, which have been named major concerns for voters ahead of the November election.