Sunday, April 28, 2024

Report: Former Special Counsel To Testify As Private Citizen

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This is bad for Biden…

Special Counsel Robert Hur will testify as a private citizen before the on Tuesday after leaving the Department of Justice (DOJ).

The Hill has more:

The source added that Hur will still be bound by DOJ policies and protocols because he is testifying about his work for the agency. When DOJ employees, former or current, are set to testify, they receive a letter explaining the bounds of DOJ policy, the source said.

Hur resigned from the DOJ last week following the conclusion of the investigation into President Biden's handling of classified documents.

Hur released his report to the public in February and did not recommend criminal charges against Biden for mishandling and retaining classified documents and stated that he wouldn't bring charges against Biden even if he were not in the Oval Office. However, the report did highlight multiple occurrences involving Biden's memory- or lack thereof. (RELATED: Prominent Republicans Demand Biden's Resignation After Special Counsel's Surprising Findings)

The special counsel described Biden as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”  

“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 wrote in the report. “Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone from whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. 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.” 

The special counsel reportedly plans to double down on his comments regarding the President's memory during his testimony.

Fox News has obtained a copy of Hur's opening remarks:

“My assessment in the report about the relevance of the President's memory was necessary and accurate and fair,” Hur wrote in a copy of the remarks obtained by Fox News. “Most importantly, what I wrote is what I believe the evidence shows, and what I expect jurors would perceive and believe. I did not sanitize my explanation. Nor did I disparage the President unfairly. I explained to the Attorney General my decision and the reasons for it. That's what I was required to do.”

“I analyzed the evidence as prosecutors routinely do: by assessing its strengths and weaknesses, including by anticipating the ways in which the President's defense lawyers might poke holes in the 's case if there were a trial and seek to persuade jurors that the government could not prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt,” Hur added.

Hur also will say: “There has been a lot of attention paid to language in the report about the President's memory, so let me say a few words about that. My task was to determine whether the President retained or disclosed national defense information “willfully”—meaning, knowingly and with the intent to do something the law forbids. I could not make that determination without assessing the President's state of mind.”

This article originally appeared on Great America News Desk. Republished with permission.

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