House Republicans subpoenaed the “transcripts, notes, video, and audio files” of interviews between President Joe Biden and Special Counsel Robert Hur, who concluded the commander-in-chief was too senile to face federal charges for retaining classified documents from his time as a senator and vice president in several nonsecure locations.
On Tuesday, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer of Kentucky and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio issued the subpoena to the Department of Justice for records related to Hur’s investigation of Biden’s mishandling of the classified documents. Earlier this month, Hur publicly determined the president would be too difficult to convict because “Biden would likely present himself to the jury, as he did during our interview with him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
“Special Counsel Robert Hur’s investigation into President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents made two things clear,” said Comer. “There’s a double standard of justice in this country and Joe Biden isn’t fit for office. The transcripts and materials from his investigation are critical to our oversight work.”
Hur’s team reported that Biden suffered significant memory lapses, including about when he was vice president and the details of his son’s death.
“Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt,” Hur’s team wrote in the nearly 400-page report. “It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him — by then a former president well into his eighties — of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”
Hur’s report accused Biden of improperly disclosing classified information to his ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer, and “risk[ing] serious damage to America’s national security.”
House Republicans are now demanding to see the transcripts for themselves, in addition to material from the investigation to probe whether Biden “may have retained sensitive documents related to specific countries involving his family’s foreign business dealings.”
“The Committees further seek to understand whether the White House or President Biden’s personal attorneys placed any limitations or scoping restrictions during the interviews with Special Counsel Hur or Mr. Mark Zwonitzer precluding or addressing any potential statements directly linking President Biden to troublesome foreign payments,” read the full subpoena.
House Republicans, including the Ways and Means Committee, are also homing in on classified documents related to a December 2015 phone call between then-Vice President Biden and the Ukrainian prime minister. Hur referenced Biden’s call with the Ukrainian leader wherein “the two exchanged pleasantries.” The phone call came around the time Biden urged Ukraine’s leadership to fire the prosecutor investigating the energy firm, Burisma, where his son Hunter Biden sat on the board.
“Congress’s authority to access information is broadest during an impeachment investigation,” lawmakers wrote. “Indeed, conducting an impeachment inquiry based on anything less than all pertinent evidence would be an affront to the Constitution and irreparably damage public faith in the impeachment process.”
