The Hur Testimony Does Not Disappoint in its Disappointment

It's usually not this enjoyable to see low energy and lack of excitement

I usually don’t pop popcorn and sit down in front of the television to watch a heavily hyped movie in the hopes that it disappoints. But this is basically what I did for the Robert Hur Congressional testimony on Tuesday (okay, I didn’t actually pop popcorn). Part of this was because of pride, as I had predicted it would disappoint (see “Regarding the Upcoming Robert Hur Congressional Testimony: Bring it On”), but another part is that I really hoped the Hur Report story would fizzle out and not continue being an issue in the upcoming presidential election. It seemed to me like mostly a nothing burger, and not worth the time and energy the media and Democrat handwringers were spending on it.

To this end, I was pleased. The testimony did disappoint; it wasn’t the groundbreaking revelatory event that Republicans obviously hoped it would be. The major reason for this is simply time. Enough time had passed for the Hur Report to become obsolete and wholly ineffective as a political cudgel. In the excitement of the moment, when the report was released on February 8, Republicans hastily scheduled Hur’s testimony hearing, obviously in the hopes that it would expose President Biden as truly a dithering idiot incapable of basic human functioning.

At that time, Biden’s age and mental acuity were the topics of the day—to a maddening degree—and were causing great tensions among the pundit class and their readers. The press was pushing a narrative of a weakened president, pundits from across the political spectrum were calling for Biden to step aside and let more vibrant and younger candidates take his place, and it was assumed that Republicans had found their most effective attack lines, and that this could be the dealbreaker in the election.

But since then, Joe Biden had racked up votes and delegates in the Democratic primaries and did a State of the Union Address that quelled fears of the weak, quiet, slow, doddering caricature that had emerged. If anything, Biden had become known for being too loud, forceful, and quick on his feet for the unsuspecting audience. There was a sea change in media focus that occurred within a month that altered the political landscape significantly. There are lots of lessons to be learned here, but we won’t go into all that in this post.

To their credit, Republicans seemed to have gotten the memo about his, and they surprisingly pulled punches on the Biden age theme. With few exceptions, they took a different tack from the outset and was actually more critical of Hur’s conclusion to decline to prosecute than anything else. Most Republicans spent their questioning time pointing out that all the elements of a crime were present, so he should therefore have charged Biden. Jim Jordan, in his usual conspiratorial zealotry, proposed that Biden purposefully broke the laws regarding retention of classified documents because he had an $8 million book deal in place. But nothing they threw out there really gained any momentum. The hearing was notable in its low energy and non-notability. It was as though the Republicans had already given up and wanted to get out of the hearing room as quickly as possible.

Democrats probably walked away from this hearing with net positive public perception, to the extent that the “public” cared and was paying attention, as they were able to use aspects of the interview transcripts against Hur. For example, Rep. Eric Swalwell pointed out that Hur complimented Biden on his “photographic understanding and recall” at one point in the interview, which didn’t really mean how it was portrayed in the media. It wasn’t widely noted in the media reports about this that the rest of the quote was “…of the house”, referring to his Wilmington home. This isn’t really so much complimentary about Biden’s memory overall, but was just an acknowledgement that he knows his home very well (who doesn’t?). This was pushed in the media as a highly effective “gotcha” moment, but it was just another example of how quotes—when taken out of context and/or from a transcript—can be manipulated for effective political ends.

And due to Republicans’ focus on criminality versus mental acuity, Democrats were able to spotlight the actual criminality of Trump’s behavior with his document retention. Congresswoman Madeleine Dean (D-PA) even made Hur himself read a portion of his report where he notes specific reasons why the Biden and Trump cases were treated differently, focusing on Trump’s evasive behavior. I had noted in my article “The Hur Report’s Comments on Biden’s Age is Not Saying What Everyone Thinks it is” that Hur doesn’t come off like a political hack partly because he treats Trump fairly harshly in his rundown of these differences, which was a major motivation for not prosecuting (these “aggravating” circumstances were not present with Biden). A case could be made that he took unnecessary political pot shots at Trump because of this.

But at times it seemed that most Democrats didn’t get the same memo as Republicans regarding the subject of Biden’s age. Due to Republicans backing off this line of interrogation and instead being critical of Hur’s declination to prosecute, Democrats had an opening to treat Hur like a cooperating friendly witness and emphasize the lack of criminal behavior by Biden and the disturbingly criminal behavior by Trump…and they didn’t fully embrace it. They could have avoided bringing up the age and memory issues at all and it would have flowed well with the tenor of the hearing.

Two early Democratic questioners, Steve Cohen (D-TN) and Hank Johnson (D-GA) were almost awkward in their vehement defense of Biden’s age and attempts to paint Hur as a MAGA operative. You could tell they were ready for a street fight, but there was not really much of a fight, and it felt more like they brought a knife to a square dance session. It would have been more effective if they had adjusted their questioning, since the Republicans that went before them focused less on these issues and more on trying to convince Hur that he was wrong in his decision to not charge Biden. It was obvious that they didn’t take my advice from my previous column (“Regarding the Upcoming…..”) to have two lines of questioning ready, one for Hur as friendly witness and one for Hur as hostile.

In the end, it was a lame hearing that didn’t gain much for the politicians involved, much less for the country. In my mind, it didn’t establish Hur as a lying political hack. I know many Democrats and liberals will disagree, as that is a popular narrative currently being pushed. If anything, it showed massive political naivete on Hur’s part. As Adam Schiff (D-CA) hammered home in his questioning, Hur must have known that this report would become public. Schiff suggested that since Hur must be smart enough to know this, he put wording in the report that disparaged Biden’s mental acuity on purpose, knowing a political firestorm would erupt around it.

But to me, the opposite seems more likely. If he was that politically astute, then why would the report be peppered with contradictions that would also easily be uncovered and used against him? All aspects of the report, and any and all documents related to the investigation, including the interview transcripts, would be equally subjected to scrutiny and criticism. And so far, there’s a little bit for everyone to hone in on and use for political gain.

The best thing to do here is assume that Hur did what he stated in his opening remarks, which was, as I suggested in my previous writings on this subject, to “show my work”, and “analyze 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 government’s case if there were a trial and seek to persuade jurors that the government could not prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Basically, he was guilty of being way too detail-oriented for many people’s comfort, and way too politically tone deaf to realize or care about the implications of his statements. But isn’t this kind of what we want and need from our prosecutors? People that are criticizing him for not doing what a normal prosecutor does aren’t considering the fact that a Special Prosecutor is different, they have to issue a report to the Attorney General that justifies their findings. And in this case, was issuing a report on the most politically sensitive subject imaginable. In this report, he laid out all the reasons he declined to prosecute President Biden, one of them being how he would likely appear (“present himself as”) to the jury. It’s a reasonable assessment and an interesting look inside the mind of a prosecutor.

But regardless, it was too easy for Democrats to spin these political narratives and that’s on the Republicans. They thought they had a smoking gun at a time when there was a lot of smoke surrounding us, and they didn’t stop for a second to think about where it would lead. Their mindless zeal backfired on them, and they proved once again that Biden’s best chances for reelection might emerge from their endless bungled attempts to discredit him.