Robert Hur, the US prosecutor who sparked a political storm last month with a report alleging President Joe Biden had a “poor memory”, defended his opinion in congressional testimony on Tuesday (Mar 12).
Hur claimed it was required for his investigation. He called the descriptions of Biden’s memory “necessary, accurate and fair”.
Hur, the former US Special Counsel, spoke to the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, which has been one of the panels conducting an impeachment inquiry into Biden.
He said, “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.”
He added, “My task was to determine whether the president retained or disclosed national defence 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.”
He added that for that reason, he had to “consider the president’s memory and overall mental state, and how a jury likely would perceive his memory and mental state in a criminal trial”.
According to Hur, the assessment in his report about the relevance of the president’s memory was “necessary and accurate and fair”.
He said, “Most importantly, what I wrote is what I believe the evidence shows, and what I expect jurors would perceive and believe.”
He said that he did not sanitise his explanation and neither did he disparage the president unfairly. He said he explained to the attorney general his decision.
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Hur declined to file criminal charges against Biden following a months-long probe into secret papers discovered at his personal residence and former office.
He spoke in Congress a week after Biden delivered a furious State of the Union address, signalling a strong start to the Democratic president’s reelection campaign against Republican predecessor Donald Trump.
Hur’s report stated that he would not pursue charges against Biden for retaining confidential materials after leaving office as vice president in 2017, but it attracted criticism from the White House for its portrayal of Biden.
(With inputs from agencies)
