A Warning for Democrats on the Hur Report

Rosenstein is of course no stranger to controversy himself, and he has known Hur for a long time. When he left in early 2021, Maryland’s senators — both Democrats — released a statement saying that “Rob should be proud of his legacy to make Marylanders safer, preserve the rule of law, and uphold the civil rights of all of our residents.” In another sign of his political independence, it later emerged that Hur had declined to prosecute former Secretary of State John Kerry after Trump publicly targeted the longtime Democrat over the nuclear deal with Iran that was brokered during the Obama administration. As you’ve almost certainly heard, the report states deep in the document that in an interview with investigators Biden “did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died.” Democrats aren’t wrong to seize on this one: The thrust of this point can and should have been conveyed in far less specific terms in a document that Hur knew would become public. Hur says as much later on a related point, when he is discussing the fact that Biden referred to being in possession of “classified” material while working with a ghostwriter on his memoir. Biden reportedly told investigators that he did not really mean “classified” in these discussions and instead simply meant “private.” Hur writes at one point that this explanation “is not credible” and in a separate section that it is “incredible,” though he goes on to say that he “cannot prove this statement was false.”