It was elite lawyer versus elite lawyer as Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) ripped into special counsel Robert Hur during Hur’s testimony on Capitol Hill today.
Schiff, a graduate of Harvard Law School, squared off against Hur, a Harvard graduate who went to the equally prestigious Stanford Law School. But the subject matter wasn’t exclusively or even primarily about the understanding of the law.
Instead, Schiff took Hur to task for his understanding of human nature and intent — and for basically ignoring the first while neglecting to admit the second.
[RELATED: Special Counsel Bypassed “Normal Review” Says Former Attorney General]
Hur was testifying about his incendiary report on President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents, the result of a year-long investigation that ultimately saw Hur fail to recommend charges against Biden.
But that didn’t mean Biden went unscathed by the report, in which Hur characterized him as an “elderly man” with a “poor memory” — opinion considered gratuitous by Democrats and welcome fodder for the campaign cannons of Donald Trump and the GOP.
Schiff told Hur: “What you wrote was deeply prejudicial to the interests of the President. You say it wasn’t political and yet you must have understood — you must have understood the impact of your words.”
Rep. Schiff: You must have understood the impact of your decision to go beyond the specifics and go to your own prejudicial opinion about the president, one you knew would be amplified by his political opponent. You knew that would influence a political campaign pic.twitter.com/DFzYqyeLD8
— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) March 12, 2024
“You must have understood the impact,” Schiff asserted, “of your decision to go to…your own personal, prejudicial, subjective opinion of the President when you knew it would be amplified by his political opponent, when you knew it would influence a political campaign. You had to understand that — and you did it anyway.”
Schiff then sought to clarify some of the differences — which Hur’s report acknowledged — between the document handling by Biden and the allegedly criminal document handling by Trump, for which he was indicted by a federal grand jury and will stand trial in Florida.
When given a chance to answer on these distinctions, Hur returned to Schiff’s accusation about the “deeply prejudicial” content of his report.
“What you are suggesting,” Hur said, “is that I needed to provide a different version of my report that would be fit for public release. That is nowhere in the rules. I was to prepare a confidential report that was comprehensive and thorough.”
Schiff didn’t draw attention to the implication that Hur had just admitted — that the version of the report he did release was not one “fit for public release.” Instead, Schiff challenged Hur on a very basic level.
“What is in the rules, Mr. Hur,” Schiff said, “is you don’t gratuitously do things to prejudice the subject of an investigation when you’re declining to prosecute. You don’t gratuitously add language that you know will be useful in a political campaign.”
Schiff continued: “You were not born yesterday. You knew exactly what you were doing. It was a choice…You understood that. It was a choice. It was a political choice. It was the wrong choice.”
Special Counsel Hur report on Biden classified documents issues contains way too many gratuitous remarks and is flatly inconsistent with long standing DOJ traditions.
Had this report been been subject to a normal DOJ review these remarks would undoubtedly have been excised.
— Eric Holder (@EricHolder) February 9, 2024