The White House clashed with the Justice Department last week ahead of the release of a special counsel report on President Biden's handling of classified information, with top department officials rejecting complaints from Biden's lawyers about defamatory comments in the report. did. Mr. President, I am showing you communications that were previously private.
The White House and Mr. Biden's personal lawyers sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick B. Garland the day before the release of Special Counsel Robert K. Hur's report suggesting that Mr. Biden's memory is failing. He disagreed with Mr. Ha's description. And even though they found no basis to prosecute him, they questioned some of his actions.
In a letter obtained by The New York Times, the lawyers said Heo's comments were “blatantly, clearly and blatantly in violation of the agency's policies and practices.”
The next day, as the department prepared to release the report, Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer, the department's senior career official or nonpolitical appointee, issued a reply rejecting their criticisms. I sent a letter. He maintained that the comments in the report were “well within the department's publication standards.”
The revealing exchanges reveal how the White House tried to prevent officials from knowing about the political turmoil caused by the release of Heo's report, and how the Justice Department refused to change course. Added new details about what happened.
Among other things, the letter raises questions between the White House and the Justice Department over whether the report is comparable to a 2016 press conference in which then-FBI Director James B. Comey Jr. reprimanded Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton that year. It shows that they had an argument. , over her use of a private email server, even as she announced that it was recommending that she not be prosecuted.
The two also said the Garland decision was a sign of tensions between the White House and the Justice Department, even as the Biden administration seeks to restore post-Trump norms of independence of Justice Department investigations from White House influence. This brought to light long-smoldering tensions.
In their challenge, Biden's lawyers stopped short of asking Garland to withhold anything from the report or instruct Herr to rewrite it.
According to people familiar with the matter, Mr. Xu is scheduled to testify publicly before the House Judiciary Committee on March 12. Republicans are using Xu's characterization that Biden cannot remember important dates in his life to strengthen their argument that Biden is too old to serve another term.
The White House and Justice Department declined to comment on the letter.
Garland last year nominated Huo, a former Trump administration political appointee, to serve as special counsel to investigate how classified documents from Biden's time as vice president ended up in Biden's office. He said he would publish the final report. He used it at his homes in Washington and Delaware.
Mr. Xu's nearly 400-page report concluded that there was no case that could be brought against Mr. Biden. The report says that while there is some evidence consistent with the conclusion that Biden knowingly kept classified materials during his term without authorization, the facts fall short of proving that he did so. He said other evidence was consistent with the innocent explanation. .
But Ho also called Biden “totally irresponsible” for keeping diaries from his time as vice president in his home that contain sensitive information, including records of meetings where national security and foreign policy issues were discussed, the report said. was used to criticize. Mr. Ho made that claim even as he acknowledged that other former presidents, including Ronald Reagan, had done the same thing and that the Justice Department had undisputed knowledge of the practice.
And, particularly explosively amid Biden's re-election campaign, Mr. Hsu has repeatedly described the president without hesitation, including calling him “old and incompetent'' and “an old man with a poor memory.''
Mr. Biden's lawyers, who were present during the five-hour meeting between Mr. He pointed out that he did. Biden has other reasons anyway.
Mr. Hur obtained a recording of Mr. Biden telling a ghostwriter in 2017, while living in a rented house in Virginia, that he “found all the classified stuff downstairs.” The special counsel tried to prove that Mr. Biden was referring to a specific file on the war in Afghanistan, which was jumbled with unrelated materials in a cardboard box in his garage in Delaware. It was discovered. If so, the recordings would provide strong evidence that Biden knowingly kept these files while he was out of office.
However, Mr. Xu could not find any evidence to prove his theory. At one point, while discussing why he declined to prosecute based on that theory, he reasoned that Biden has memory problems. Biden speculated that he “might have encountered” memory loss at his home in Virginia, but then “quickly forgot it,” convincing jurors that he didn't clutch on purpose. He said it was possible.
But elsewhere, Heo said there was insufficient evidence to file criminal charges under that theory, regardless of Biden's memory. They couldn't even prove that the materials related to the Afghanistan war were in the Virginia home, and they couldn't say who put them in the box. He acknowledged that the findings are consistent with a scenario in which the documents “may have been accidentally stored at his home in Delaware without his knowledge since he was vice president.”
In that recording, Mr. Biden was actually talking about finding something else, which was a classified but unclassified memo he wrote to Mr. Obama in 2009 about the war, and that He said he believed the document must have been thrown into parliament. Boxes by people removing his belongings from the Vice President's residence.
Since the report's release, some commentators have compared Mr. Hsu's decision to include his views on Mr. Biden's mental capacity to Mr. Comey's slander of Mr. Clinton in 2016. Comey said that while “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring criminal charges against her over the matter, he called her “extremely careless” for using her private email server. he accused.
In a subsequent inspector general report, Mr. Comey argued that law enforcement officers should not “essentially 'bury' the subject of an investigation with unprosecutable misconduct.” It was found that there was a violation of the Ministry's regulations.
The sharp exchange of letters shows that Mr. Biden's legal team was drawing attention to that very comparison before Mr. Garland decided to follow through on his promise to release the report.
“Mr. Ha's criticism of President Biden reflects one of the most widely recognized examples in recent history of inappropriate criticism of prosecutors for non-prosecution conduct,” said attorney White. House Counsel Edward N. Siskel and Mr. Biden's personal attorney Bob Bauer) wrote. The Attorney General said in a three-page letter dated February 7.
Mr. Weinsheimer rejected the comparison to Mr. Comey in a response on behalf of the department the next day. He said Mr. Xu's comments were “appropriate” given the context of his comments, as it is the prosecutor's job to make and explain the decision whether to bring charges at the end of an investigation. He said Comey's disparagement of Clinton as FBI director was “not a comment offered to explain the evidence and its application to the law.”
“The identified language is not provided for the purpose of criticizing or disparaging the President, and therefore is not unfair or unfairly prejudicial. Rather, it is not intended to be unfair or prejudicial. It is provided to explain Special Counsel Herr's conclusions,” Weinsheimer wrote.
In a five-page follow-up letter to Weinsheimer on February 12, Sauber and Bauer forcefully rejected his response. They argued that Comey “of course” made the comments about Clinton to explain that he believed the evidence showed that Clinton's actions were “extremely careless.” However, he maintained that he did not cross the line of indictable conduct.
The inspector general's report also states the general principle that not only FBI employees but also “prosecutors in each department” must “not imply or allege any wrongdoing by individuals who have not been charged with a crime.” He pointed out that it actually shows. ”
The White House also added to the Feb. 7 letter to Garland two earlier letters sent by another White House lawyer, Richard Sauber, to Herr and his representatives in September and October. It was attached. The former opposed Mr. Hsu's decision to make Mr. Biden's vice-presidential diary part of the focus of a criminal investigation, based on precedents such as those of President Ronald Reagan.
Second, because of the possibility of charges being filed against Mr. Garland, when writing the report, he adhered to “fundamental principles of fairness” and not disclosing information that would unfairly harm those who have not been charged with a crime. He asked Mr. Heo to strictly adhere to the policy. Publish the report.
In that sense, the exchange is in contrast to the agency's rules for special counsel investigations, enacted in 1999 amid bipartisan agreement that the previous Independent Attorney Act had allowed special agents to run amok. It highlighted the disconnect between how investigations have actually functioned. The 1999 rule was created in the wake of Ken Starr's investigation of President Bill Clinton, which went from probing land deals to a lengthy and sordid report on extramarital affairs.
The rule gives the attorney general the power to block the special counsel's actions if they are “so inappropriate or unreasonable in light of established departmental practice that they should not be pursued.” . In reality, however, the attorney general is under enormous political pressure not to intervene lest he be accused of a cover-up.
And while the regulations only require the special counsel to write a “confidential” report to the attorney general at the end of an investigation explaining their decisions on prosecution, a lengthy narrative that the special counsel clearly intended to Writing reports has become the norm. It will be made public, and the Attorney General has also made that clear.
Weinsheimer defended Garland's decision to move forward with releasing the Hur report, saying the language the Biden team objected to “directly” detailed the basis for the decision not to release the Hur report. , argued that it was appropriate to do so. He is accused of a sensitive issue that has attracted the attention of a national debate.
“The report addresses whether the President, as a private citizen, mishandled classified information in violation of criminal law,” Weinsheimer wrote. “This is near the pinnacle of public interest. The report and its release, including the identified language, is consistent with department policy and practice.”
In a Feb. 12 follow-up letter, Mr. Sauber and Mr. Bauer cited criticism of the department's actions by three former senior officials from previous Democratic administrations: former Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., and former deputy attorney general. Also mentioned. Jamie Golick and Preet Bharara, former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
“The choice to include these, and it was certainly a choice, follows the department's tradition of trying to abide by special counsel regulations or refrain from criticizing conduct for which it has not been charged. “This is inconsistent with any good faith attempt,” they wrote.
