House Republicans have requested transcripts and tapes of President Joe Biden’s interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur’s office after a report found the president had “willfully” retained classified documents.
House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.), House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), and House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) said the records are required for “investigatory purposes.”
“As detailed in Mr. Hur’s report, classified materials found at both President Biden’s residence in Wilmington, Delaware, and the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement include documents related to China and Ukraine,” the letter reads.
In the letter, the GOP lawmakers said “there is concern that President Biden may have retained sensitive documents related to specific countries involving his family’s foreign business dealings.”
“Further, we seek to understand whether the White House or President Biden’s personal attorneys placed any limitations or scoping restrictions during the interview that would have precluded a line of inquiry regarding evidence (emails, text messages, or witness statements) directly linking the president to troublesome foreign payments.”
This request is also part of the Judiciary Committee’s “ongoing oversight of the Department’s commitment to impartial justice and its handling of the investigation and prosecution of President Biden’s presumptive opponent, Donald J. Trump, in the November 2024 presidential election,” according to the letter.
“Although Mr. Hur reasoned that President Biden’s presentation ‘as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory’ who ‘did not remember when he was vice president’ or ‘when his son Beau died’ posed challenges to proving the president’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, the report concluded that the Department’s principles of prosecution weighed against prosecution because the Department has not prosecuted a former president or vice president for mishandling classified documents from his own administration.
“The one ‘exception’ to the Department’s principles of prosecution, as Mr. Hur noted, ‘is former President Trump.’ This speaks volumes about the Department’s commitment to evenhanded justice,” they stated.
The GOP lawmakers requested “all documents and communications, including audio and video recordings, related to the special counsel’s interview of President Biden.”
They also requested documents related to President Biden’s 2015 call with then-Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and Mr. Hur’s interview with the president’s book ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer.
Special Counsel’s Report
The special counsel’s 388-page report found that President Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.”These materials include “marked classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, and notebooks containing Mr. Biden’s handwritten entries about issues of national security and foreign policy implicating sensitive intelligence sources and methods.”
However, the special counsel decided not to prosecute the president due to insufficient evidence to establish his guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt” and the president’s “poor memory.”
