AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
Congressional testimonies often don't live up to the hype, but Robert Hur's trip to Capitol Hill on Tuesday was everything Republicans were hoping it would be.
The now-former special counsel was in charge of investigating Joe Biden's theft and mishandling of classified documents, some of which were found unsecured in his garage. That led to a report from Hur that was lambasted by Democrats for supposedly overstepping its bounds. What was the issue? It included ample evidence of the current president's senility, including significant memory loss.
But if Democrats were hoping to beat back some of the narratives produced by Hur's accurate portrayal of the facts, they quickly found out he wasn't there to play along with their gambit.
Hur did not back down on his assessment of Biden's memory, proclaiming that the "president himself" made it an issue. In one case, the president tried to deflect from his inability to recall an event by claiming his son had died in the same year. As Hur notes, Beau Biden actually died two years earlier, in 2015. The White House lied about that exchange in the initial aftermath of the report, claiming that it was the special counsel who brought up Beau Biden. The president repeated that assertion during a disastrous press conference. The transcript, which Hur had at the ready during the hearing, showed otherwise.
On that same topic, Hur was asked about whether the White House pressured him to change parts of his report to protect Biden politically. He confirmed that did happen, sharing details of a letter in which it was demanded that mentions of Biden's failing memory be removed.
Another big blow to Democrats came when Rep. Pramila Jayapal tried to claim that Hur had "exonerated" the president. The former special counsel responded by flatly denying that his report did any such thing.
As RedState reported at the time, the report pointed to ample evidence that Biden broke the law. The reason Hur didn't recommend prosecution was two-fold. First, a sitting president can't be indicted under current DOJ protocol. Secondly, according to the report, Biden is just too old and cognitively challenged to stand trial.
Another incredible exchange came when Rep. Adam Schiff suggested that Hur should have released a sanitized version of his report so as not to make judgments about someone who wasn't criminally charged.
Of note is that Schiff fully supported Robert Mueller's special counsel report, which made all sorts of negative claims about Donald Trump despite the former president not being charged with any crimes. The California congressman also lived on television for several years, making all kinds of wild accusations involving Russian collusion, including claiming to have proof. For him to go after Hur for reporting the facts on Biden's activities and testimony is the height of irony.
When it was Rep. Jim Jordan's turn to question Hur, he brought up the evidence that Biden kept the documents so he could illegally leak them to his ghostwriter. The president made $8 million from the book advance. The former special counsel testified that there is reason to believe that was the motivation.
In yet another exchange, Hur was asked about Biden's ghostwriter and whether he destroyed evidence.
David Petraeus was prosecuted for doing the same thing, which begs the question of why no one is being brought to justice in this case. Of course, no one will be. As a criminal matter, Biden's DOJ has already shut the door and there's no reason to think it will be opened again. As a political matter? Well, that's a different story.
Hur's testimony was a disaster for Democrats. It produced a litany of viral moments, all showing Biden to be both flagrantly disrespectful of the law and in steep mental decline. It's a news cycle the White House couldn't afford given the current president's already tenuous re-election effort.
