OPINION:
Former special counsel Robert Hur refused to exonerate President Biden on Tuesday. Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee did their best to reframe the decision not to prosecute their party’s standard-bearer over mishandled secret papers as a clean bill of legal health — to no avail.
“The word exoneration does not appear in my report, and that is not my conclusion,” Mr. Hur countered.
From his days as a U.S. senator, Joe Biden had a habit of taking classified material from work and storing it haphazardly in a number of insecure locations. They include his garage, basement, home office, the Biden Institute, the Penn Biden Center and the University of Delaware.
Mr. Biden was aware he had the material because he passed some of it along to his ghostwriter, who does not hold a security clearance. In doing so, Mr. Biden knowingly risked jeopardizing national security.
On his way out as vice president, Mr. Biden had received an $8 million book deal for his memoirs, which he believed would help advance his legacy as a statesman. He used the documents — which included the notes he took as vice president — to recall key events. He viewed them as his personal property.
“It wasn’t just the $8 million, it was also his ego,” said Rep. Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican. “Pride and money is why he violated the rules — the oldest motives in the book, pride and money. Do you agree with that, Mr. Hur?”
Mr. Hur validated the committee chairman’s judgment, saying, “That language does appear in the report, and we did identify evidence to support those assessments.”
The ghostwriter also knew he was doing something underhanded: He attempted to destroy evidence of classified conversations with Mr. Biden as soon as he found out an investigation was underway.
Despite this, Mr. Hur famously declined to bring charges because Mr. Biden was cooperative, and he appeared well meaning and forgetful in a five-hour voluntary interview about the matter in October.
“One of the things I considered would be how, if a trial were theoretically to be held, how President Biden would present himself to the jury if he elected to testify,” the special counsel explained.
It is not clear whether Mr. Biden was feigning bewilderment, or if he truly couldn’t remember such details as when his son Beau died and when he served as vice president. Neither is a particularly good look for someone aspiring to reelection as president.
Mr. Hur’s reasoning is well founded. Although he didn’t say it in these words Tuesday, there’s no way a jury in the District would ever convict Mr. Biden of anything, much less a petty charge related to mishandling vice presidential papers.
The special counsel made the correct decision in a vacuum, but that is not the situation in which we find ourselves. Mr. Biden was let off the hook for the same alleged violation that the Department of Justice hopes to use to hang former President Donald Trump.
The Department of Justice can’t have it both ways. Either both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden must face the consequences of their equivalent actions, or neither should be prosecuted.
Unfortunately, Attorney General Merrick Garland has selected the partisan and unprincipled course to the lasting detriment of our constitutional republic.
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