Allies of President Joe Biden are pointing fingers at his legal and communications teams for missteps they say aggravated the political damage of special counsel Robert Hur’s findings in his classified documents investigation.
Some leading Democratic politicians expressed their frustration directly to high-level administration officials in the wake of the report, insisting that the overall response to the probe had been too muted and that the release of the response was completely bungled politically.
Hur declined to bring criminal charges against Biden and said the facts stopped short of finding he willfully retained classified material. But in doing so, Hur offered a deeply damaging portrait of an aging president beset by memory issues, who had trouble recalling dates and details during his five-hour interview with the special counsel.
White House and Biden allies have taken aim at Hur for what they view as a gratuitous characterization of the president. But some Democrats and supporters of the president have questioned the decision to sit for a five-hour interview over two days last October amid a spiraling Middle East crisis. They’re also putting scrutiny on the decision to allow the interview to be recorded and for the communications strategy that they believe has added to the president’s reelection woes.
A source close to the Biden legal team pushed back at the criticism of their strategy, saying, “After a hostile prosecutor investigated the president for 15 months trying to find something to charge, the Biden legal team strategy ended with zero indictments and total exoneration. That is an unequivocal win.”
From the beginning of the documents matter, in November 2022 when classified documents turned up at a former office space Biden used between his vice-presidential tenure and his…
Read the full article here
Leave a Reply