Garland Says He Wouldn’t Have Changed Special Counsel’s Conclusions on Biden

Attorney General Merrick Garland in Washington on March 21, 2024. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images) Zachary Stieber

President Joe Biden’s attorney general on March 21 defended himself against critics who were upset when he released a special counsel report on the president’s handling of classified documents without edits or redactions.

Special counsel Robert Hur said in the report that President Biden intentionally retained and disclosed classified materials after his eight years as vice president but concluded that no prosecution was warranted.

In the 388-page report, which was released by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Mr. Hur also said that the decision not to prosecute stemmed in part from the idea 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.”

A reporter on Thursday asked if Attorney General Merrick Garland should have intervened to alter Mr. Hur’s descriptions of President Biden.

“No one from the White House has said that to me,” Mr. Garland responded during an unrelated press conference.

White House Counsel Ed Siskel wrote to Mr. Garland before Mr. Hur’s report was released to the public, accusing Mr. Hur of “pejoratively characterizing uncharged conduct.”

“We object to the multiple denigrating statements about President Biden’s memory which violate longstanding DOJ practice and policy. The Special Counsel can certainly and properly note that the President lacked memory of a specific fact or series of events. But his report goes further to include allegations that the President has a failing memory in a general sense, an allegation that has no law enforcement purpose,” Mr. Siskel wrote at the time.

Mr. Siskel suggested editing the report to make it “economical,” writing, “It should include the factual information necessary to the charging decision, but facts or events that are not essential to the decision have no place.”

Mr. Garland noted he committed previously to making all special counsel reports public, and that all such reports have been released since the special counsel regulation went into effect some 25 years ago.

“The idea that an attorney general would edit or redact or censor the special counsel’s explanation for why the special counsel reached the decision the special counsel did—that’s absurd,” Mr. Garland told reporters.

The regulations enable the attorney general to appoint a special counsel when U.S. attorneys investigating or prosecuting a person would present a conflict of interest and it would be in the public interest to appoint a special counsel. Mr. Garland appointed Mr. Hur in 2023, after a preliminary probe showed classified documents were found at President Biden’s former office in Washington and home in Wilmington, Delaware.

A special counsel must offer conclusions to the attorney general once an investigation ends and the attorney general “may determine that public release of these reports would be in the public interest, to the extent that release would comply with applicable legal restrictions.”

Special counsel Robert Hur listens as he testifies before a House Judiciary Committee hearing on his probe into President Joe Biden's mishandling of classified materials after serving as vice president, on Capitol Hill in Washington on March 12, 2024. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

Biden Upset

President Biden was visibly upset following the release of the report.

“I’m well-meaning, and I’m an elderly man, and I know what the hell I’m doing. I’ve been president and I put this country back on its feet,” he said after it was released.

Other Democrats have criticized Mr. Hur’s report. “Despite clearing President Biden from being prosecuted, you use your report to trash and smear President Biden,” Rep. Hank Johnson (R-Ga.) said during a hearing with Mr. Hur.

Mr. Hur in the February hearing defended his description of President Biden, saying 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” when carrying out his task of assessing whether the president had willfully kept or disclosed national defense information.

President Biden also said that Mr. Hur wrongly said he could not recall when his son Beau passed away.

“I don’t need anyone, anyone, to remind me when he passed away,” President Biden said. “How the hell dare he raise that.”

The transcripts of the interviews, though, showed the president was the one who raised the matter, and that he forgot his son died in 2015.

At the same briefing, President Biden said the president of Egypt is actually the president of Mexico, the latest in a series of incorrect statements.

When President Biden nominated Mr. Garland, he said that he wanted the DOJ to be independent.

“You won’t work for me. You are not the president or the vice president’s lawyer. Your loyalty is not to me. It’s to the law, the Constitution, the people of this nation, to guarantee justice,” he said at the time,” he said at the time.

Me. Garland invoked the remarks on Thursday as he defended how he handled Mr. Hur’s report.

“I sincerely believe that that’s what he intended then, and I sincerely believe that that’s what he intends now,” Mr. Garland said.