WASHINGTON — White House spokesman Ian Sams escalated a clash with the presidential press corps Thursday by circulating a letter accusing the country’s top news outlets of publishing “striking inaccuracies” about special counsel Robert Hur’s scathing report on President Biden’s handling of classified documents.
Sams claimed in a four-page scolding missive addressed to White House Correspondents’ Association President Kelly O’Donnell, of NBC, that journalists made Biden’s conduct sound worse than it was — singling out reports by CNN, CBS, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Reuters and The Associated Press.
When O’Donnell didn’t forward the Tuesday reprimand to journalists, Sams posted it to X on Wednesday and on Thursday escalated further by asking the day’s pool reporters to send it along to other Correspondents’ Association members.
O’Donnell rebuked Sams’ tactics in a rare Thursday afternoon note to journalists, writing that the letter was “misdirected” and that it was “inappropriate” for the White House press office to use pool reporters to circulate it.
“As a non-profit organization that advocates for its members in their efforts to cover the presidency, the WHCA does not, cannot and will not serve as a repository for the government’s views of what’s in the news. The White House has far reach to make its positions known on the Hur report or any other matter,” O’Donnell wrote to fellow reporters.
“The White House has the contact information for every bureau chief, editor and reporter covering the beat, and should reach out to them directly with any concerns about their editorial decision-making,” the widely respected veteran journalist wrote.
“In its 110-year history, our association has never controlled or policed the journalism that is published or broadcast by our members or their employers.
“It is inappropriate for the White House to utilize internal pool distribution channels, primarily for logistics and the rapid sharing of need-to-know information, to disseminate generalized critiques of news coverage. We will not distribute them going forward,” O’Donnell added.
“The WHCA welcomes — and its members surely seek — further opportunities to ask questions of the president, the White House counsel, or the president’s personal attorney on this matter.”
Sams’ letter to O’Donnell claimed that virtually every news outlet in the country misunderstood the special counsel report.
News outlets were wrong to focus on the third sentence of Hur’s report, which said, “Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen,” Sams wrote in the letter.
Sams insisted that a more careful reading showed that the assessment only pertained to some of the nation’s secrets hoarded in Biden’s post-vice presidency residences and unlocked DC office, according to other passages from Hur, who recommended against criminal charging Biden, 81, in part on the grounds that jurors would see a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
“I write to express my concern about how member organizations have reported on the recent report by Special Counsel Robert Hur. It is understandable that covering the report is challenging. It is nearly 400 pages long and written in a confusing, meandering way. It is not straightforward,” Sams wrote.
The spokesperson wrote that “many outlets have reported striking inaccuracies that misrepresent the report’s conclusion about the President, and reporters in the White House Briefing Room have asked questions that include false content or are based on false premises.”
Sams, who also is the primary presidential rep on the House impeachment inquiry into alleged Biden family corruption, argued that Hur only found “some” evidence of willful retention of classified documents and that “to report that the Special Counsel ‘found’ or ‘concluded’ willful retention by the President is refuted by the conclusion that charges were not warranted.”
“The report states on page 1 that the Special Counsel ‘found evidence’ of willful retention related solely to two buckets: (1) a set of Afghanistan classified documents, and (2) some sections of his own personal diaries and notes,” Sams wrote.
“This appears to be what the widespread media coverage is based on. Perhaps the Special Counsel could have better written this sentence as ‘found some evidence’ related to these two buckets, but after exploring the theory and reviewing the full totality of facts and evidence available — not just some of it — the Special Counsel determined that the evidence refused willful retention or disclosure,” he added.
“On the Afghanistan classified documents: the report finds, ‘While it is natural to assume that Mr. Biden put the Afghanistan documents in the box on purpose and that he knew they were there, there is in fact a shortage of evidence o these points.’…. One the personal diary notebooks that the President maintained: the Special Counsel concluded, ‘the evidence does not show that when Mr. Biden shared the specific passages with his ghostwriter, Mr. Biden knew the passages were classified and intended to share the information.'”
Sams took issue with other common elements of reporting on Hur’s report.
“Other coverage has incorrectly reported on a reference to an audio recording made at his Virginia home in 2017 in which the President is heard remarking on ‘classified stuff downstairs’,” Sams wrote.
“For example, Reuters reported: ‘Biden told his ghostwriter… that he had ‘just found all the classified stuff’ downstairs… referring to documents on the US war in Afghanistan.’ This was also raised by a reporter in the Briefing Room. In fact: The report considers whether this was in reference to Afghanistan classified documents but concludes that there is no evidence those documents were even in the President’s home at the time.”
Sams did not address reporting on Hur’s assessment of Biden’s perceived cognitive decline during five hours of interviews with investigators on Oct. 8-9, other than to write that “the Special Counsel’s false and inappropriate personal comments have distracted from due attention to the substance.”
The spokesman, who is the designated rep for the White House counsel’s office, did not address Biden’s own alleged misinformation about the classified records investigation.
Biden claimed in a fiery Thursday back-and-forth with reporters that Hur’s team insensitively questioned him about the death of his son Beau in 2015 of brain cancer, but an NBC report Wednesday said that Hur’s team did not raise the matter and Biden actually brought up the topic and attributed an incorrect timeframe to it.
The president also told reporters that Hur’s report did not accuse him of sharing classified documents with ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer, when in fact it says, “Mr. Biden shared information including some classified information from [his handwritten] notebooks with his ghostwriter.”
Biden told the press, “I did not share classified information — I did not share it — with my ghostwriter, I did not. Guarantee you, I did not.”
The White House has sought to distinguish Biden’s conduct from the actions of former President Donald Trump, 77, who faces 40 criminal charges and up to 450 years in prison for allegedly mishandling classified documents after leaving the White House in 2021.
Trump, who is seeking a rematch against Biden in the November election, has alleged a double standard.
It’s unclear why Sams, who is widely seen by journalists as one of the most intelligent and articulate White House spokespeople, chose to send the missive to the Correspondents’ Association when the organization has no role in vetting the coverage of member organizations.
Days earlier, the association invited Sams to field reporter questions at a White House briefing and he did so Friday.
Pressure on news organizations can be deployed strategically in an attempt to alter coverage and the Biden White House has outraged the press corps by using a still-mysterious prescreening process for journalists let into large indoor events that under past presidents were open to all reporters on campus.
In an earlier spat with the press, Biden’s campaign in 2019 wrote to the New York Times complaining about in-depth investigative reporting on the Biden family’s foreign dealings during Joe Biden’s vice presidency. In subsequent years, the country’s most-read newspaper has not been a leader in reporting new information on discoveries about Joe Biden’s role in those ventures.