The president is struggling in more ways than one. But this is starting to get sad.
Because Joe Biden’s White House fell flat on its face with one embarrassing announcement.
The White House announced Tuesday that special counsel Robert Hur’s testimony before Congress cleared President Biden of any misconduct in handling secret documents, only hours after Mr. Hur argued his probe did not exonerate the president.
“After all this time, the millions of pages of records that have been reviewed; 150 witnesses have been interviewed. The conclusion was there is simply no case here. Case closed. It’s time to move on,” said White House spokesperson Ian Sams.
Mr. Sams’ assessment of Mr. Hur’s testimony and the report he produced last month summarizing his inquiry into Mr. Biden’s handling of sensitive documents differs from what the special counsel told senators earlier Tuesday.
“I did not exonerate him,” Mr. Hur stated during his testimony.
“That word does not appear in my report.”
Nonetheless, Mr. Sams claimed that because Mr. Hur did not file any charges against the president, the probe should be considered as complete vindication.
“In America, we do have the presumption of innocence,” Mr. Sams told reporters.
“When a prosecutor spent 15 months investigating the case only to determine that there is no case here and that there will be no charges and the case is closed, it only affirms the innocence of the president.”
Mr. Sams also attacked Mr. Hur, claiming that the prosecutor, who was appointed U.S. Attorney for Maryland by President Trump, was politically motivated when he referenced Mr. Biden’s fuzzy recall in his report.
“I think today laid bare the special counsel, who was a Trump appointee, made some inappropriate comments that do not match up with the transcript,” he said.
Mr. Hur stated that during an interview with prosecutors, the president was unable to recollect when his son, Beau, died of cancer.
According to the transcript, a White House lawyer interrupted the president to inform him that Beau had died in 2015, to which Mr. Biden answered, “Was it 2015 he died?”
“The transcript makes it very clear, and I think the American people understand this, the president remembers exactly when his son died. He carries that emotional toll with him every day,” Mr. Sams said.
When asked whether the White House would release audio or video of Mr. Biden’s two-day October interview with the special counsel, Mr. Sams said he didn’t see the point.
“There’s really no reason that anyone would need the audio tape,” he went on to say.
“We have a transcript that’s been made public. The point of an audio recording is to form a transcript and that’s the official record of the proceeding.”
Stay tuned to the DC Daily Journal.
