Senators Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) and Ron Johnson (R., Wis.) identified an aspect of the Biden classified documents investigation left out of special counsel Robert Hur’s final report.
Grassley and Johnson wrote a letter Friday to Hur, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and Attorney General Merrick Garland asking why Hur’s report appeared to omit any mention of nine boxes of Joe Biden records retrieved from attorney Patrick Moore’s Boston office.
“Publicly released emails between NARA officials and Mr. Moore support NARA’s claim that it picked up boxes from Mr. Moore’s Boston office on November 9, 2022,” the letter reads. Grassley and Johnson cite pages 67 and 69 of a Freedom of Information Act document dump that included emails between NARA employees and Moore coordinating the document retrieval.
“At that time, NARA appeared to have been concerned about the sensitive nature of the records leading NARA’s general counsel to warn Mr. Moore to ‘ensure that the boxes in your office in Boston remain secure in a locked space and are not accessed by anyone,’” the senators continue.
“Oddly, Special Counsel Hur’s report did not mention NARA’s retrieval of the nine boxes from Mr. Moore’s office. This apparent omission is significant given that, according to NARA, the Department of Justice requested that NARA recover the boxes,” the letter adds, citing communications on page 71 of the FOIA documents.
The National Archives and Records Administration confirmed the existence of the boxes in a March 7, 2023, response letter to the Republican senators. Grassley and Johnson followed up with an inquiry into whether the FBI reviewed the documents in the boxes, to which NARA responded in April by deferring to Hur’s investigation.
NARA and the FBI did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Grassley and Johnson are giving the Justice Department and FBI until February 23 to respond to their letter.
Hur’s final report detailed Joe Biden’s retention of classified documents related to foreign policy and national security matters. The special counsel declined to pursue criminal charges against the sitting president but made note of Joe Biden’s apparent struggles with memory loss.
“We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden 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,” Hur said.
Hur specifically described instances where President Biden forgot he was vice president and struggled to remember the year his late son Beau Biden passed away.
President Biden responded by holding a press conference Thursday evening where he angrily pushed back against Hur’s report and confused the president of Egypt with that of Mexico.