George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley described Friday on Fox News the “serious problem” he had with special counsel Robert Hur’s report on President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents.
Turley appeared on “The Ingraham Angle” to discuss Hur’s recent decision to not press charges against Biden. Hur said Biden presented himself as an “elderly man with a poor memory” during their interviews. Fox host Laura Ingraham asked Turley if he believed Hur violated any “ethical guidelines” throughout his report. (RELATED: ‘It Practically Screams’: Calls To Invoke The 25th Erupt After Hur’s Damning Biden Report)
“No, I don’t think he’s committed any unethical act here. The key to remember is that he took an investigation where the retention and mishandling of classified information was established within the first hour. So he already knew that President Biden had classified material. He knew that they were housed in highly inappropriate spots. The president lied about that. Even after the report — they were in his garage in these torn up boxes,” Turley stated.
Turley said that the “serious problem” he had with Hur’s report was that Hur described “every element of a crime” but decided not to proceed with charges due to an assumption the jury would make about Biden’s mental fitness. The law professor highlighted that following Hur’s report, Biden had a late night press conference Thursday in an apparent attempt to ease doubt about his mental state, which led Turley to question whether the president had been “deceptive” during his interviews with Hur.
“So the question for Hur was well, ‘Do we still go ahead and prosecute him?’ That’s a matter of, in his view, intent. He said we could not establish that full intent because of a lack of memory. That lack of memory was material to his decision. He was saying, ‘The president would just blank out whenever we asked him about these dates, going back 40 years.’ So he was talking about the key issue, the only issue that remained,” Turley continued.
“Now, I have a serious problem with the report because he describes every element of a crime and then says, ‘Well, we just didn’t think a jury would take to convicting this elderly guy with a poor memory.’ It makes it sound like if he was less sympathetic or his memory was a little better, he might have been charged. But in terms of talking about his memory, that was the key issue that he was investigating – how much did Biden remember?”
“Also, Laura, what was really odd about this press conference is that only one of two things could be true, right? Either he has diminished memory, or he was deceptive, right? He went in front of the entire country and said, ‘No, I’ve got [a] great memory.’ That means you were deceptive with the special counsel. So it’s a very odd press conference from so many different vantage points,” Turley stated.
While Biden faced scrutiny following the report, the president attempted to defend his mental fitness during the Thursday press conference. However, during the appearance, Biden had multiple slip ups. He mislabeled the president of Egypt as the president of Mexico and forgot which parish gave him a rosary he carries to remember his late eldest son, Beau. (RELATED: Gregg Jarrett Explains Why Biden’s Classified Docs Case Doesn’t Have Defense Under Federal Records Act)
Attacks on Hur have circulated since the report, with multiple Biden aides slamming the special counsel’s description of Biden and others labeling him a “MAGA guy.” Turley noted that while he believes Hur came to the “wrong conclusion,” the attacks now piling on him are “beyond the pale.”
“I think that Hur may have come to the wrong conclusion on whether to charge the president or whether there was evidence for a criminal charge. I could have understood if he said, ‘Look, traditionally, we just don’t charge these issues.’ But he couldn’t say that because of Trump, but to attack him in this way is beyond the pale, in my view,” Turley stated.