House GOP Subpoenas Justice Department for Biden Special Counsel Documents

U.S. Attorney Robert Hur speaks at a news conference at the U.S. Attorney's Office, in Baltimore, Md., on Sept. 19, 2018. Zach Gibson/Getty Images

A group of House committees subpoenaed Attorney General Merrick Garland on Feb. 27 for materials surrounding special counsel Robert Hur’s probe of President Joe Biden allegedly mishandling classified information.

The group consists of the House Oversight Committee, the House Ways and Means Committee, and the House Judiciary Committee.

They requested notes, audio files, video, and transcripts of Mr. Hur’s probe. The committees set a deadline of March 7, according to a copy of the subpoena obtained by The Epoch Times.

“Americans expect equal justice under the law and DOJ is allowing the Bidens to operate above it,” said House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) in a statement. “Special Counsel Hur’s report outlined that classified documents Joe Biden stashed for years relate to countries where his family cashed in on the Biden brand.”

This is the second time the committees have asked the Department of Justice to turn over these records, the first time being on Feb. 12.

Mr. Hur announced on Feb. 8 that President Biden would not be charged.

“Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen,” Mr. Hur wrote in a 388-page report to Mr. Garland.

The materials, the report stated, included “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.” The FBI collected these items during a search of President Biden’s residence in Wilmington, Delaware, last year.

The FBI last year also searched the president’s home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, where they also found classified materials.

Nonetheless, Mr. Hur said that “the evidence does not establish Mr. Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt” and that “prosecution of Mr. Biden is also unwarranted based on our consideration of the aggravating and mitigating factors set forth in the Department of Justice’s Principles of Federal Prosecution.”

The classified documents are from President Biden’s more than four-decade career in politics, which has included the Senate, the vice presidency, and now the presidency.

Issues of Reasonable Doubt

Mr. Hur interviewed President Biden over the span of two days last year.

In deciding not to charge the president, Mr. Hur said that a jury likely wouldn’t convict him, in part due to his cognitive issues.

“We have also considered 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,” Mr. Hur wrote.

“Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him—by then a former president well into his eighties—of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”

The Afghanistan documents, which had the highest level of classification in the United States, were from 2009. These papers were in a Virginia home that President Biden rented in 2019 and where he met with a ghostwriter for his two books before the classified documents were sent to Delaware.

“Nevertheless, we do not believe this evidence is sufficient, as jurors would likely find reasonable doubt for one or more of several reasons,” Mr. Hur wrote.

“Both when he served as vice president and when the Afghanistan documents were found in Mr. Biden’s Delaware garage in 2022, his possession of them in his Delaware home was not a basis for prosecution because as vice president and president, he had authority to keep classified documents in his home.

“The best case for charges would rely on Mr. Biden’s possession of the Afghanistan documents in his Virginia home in February 2017, when he was a private citizen and when he told his ghostwriter he had just found classified material.”

‘Forgetfulness’ Defense

President Biden’s forgetfulness could be a rationale for unintentionally keeping the classified information, according to Mr. Hur.

“While the Special Counsel may have declined to charge the president citing his memory problems, Congress and the American people do not consider ‘elderly and well meaning’ a defense for corruption,” said Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) in a statement.

Additionally, the FBI found notebooks from President Biden’s time as vice president that he knew “contained classified information,” Mr. Hur said.

Nonetheless, the evidence wouldn’t “meet the government’s burden at trial—particularly the requirement to prove that Mr. Biden intended to do something the law forbids,” Mr. Hur said.

“We expect Mr. Biden’s defense at trial would be that he thought his notebooks were his personal property and he was allowed to take them home, even if they contained classified information.”

In addition to the president’s Delaware homes and the rented Virginia home, classified documents were also found at the Penn Biden Center in Washington and the University of Delaware.

The report referenced classified materials related to the 2015 phone call between then-Vice President Biden and then-Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, in which the former called for the firing of Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin. The GOP committees requested the classified information.