March 12, 2024 - The Benny Show - Benny Johnson
05:08:28
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Also today, Special Counsel Robert Herr will testify for the first time before Congress on his report on President Biden's handling of classified documents. | |
| He's going to field questions about his findings that sparked major questions about the president's mental acuity, his mental fitness. | ||
| Madeline Rivera joins us live from Washington with details. | ||
| Madeline, good morning. | ||
| Good morning, Steve. | ||
| Bryan and Ainsley. | ||
| House Democrats will likely try to emphasize that President Biden was not charged. | ||
| House Republicans, meantime, will probably hammer special counsel Robert Herr on his characterizations of the president. | ||
| To recap, some of the classified materials found in the president's possession included documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan. | ||
| They were found in a badly damaged box in the president's Delaware garage surrounded by household items. | ||
| But Heard gives this reason for not prosecuting President Biden. | ||
| 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. | ||
| He did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended. | ||
| He did not remember even within several years when his son Bo died. | ||
| The report angered the White House and the president, who immediately went on the defensive, slamming her for suggesting he did not remember when Bo died. | ||
| But two sources familiar with the investigation told Fox it was the president who brought up Bo's death in his interview, not the special counsel. | ||
| Regardless, the White House argues her essentially stepped out of his leg. | ||
|
unidentified
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Just a little part of what we get to see, he's made mistake after mistake after mistake after mistake on camera this week. | |
| So I'm going to be very clear here. | ||
| The reality is that report, that part of the report does not live in reality. | ||
| It just doesn't. | ||
| So the special counsel is lying about the president's memory. | ||
| It was gratuitous. | ||
| House Republicans issued a subpoena for the DOJ to hand over the transcript and recordings of the president's interview with her. | ||
| They have so far not received those items. | ||
| There are 1,850 boxes and 415 gigabytes of electronic records consisting of the so-called Biden records. | ||
| The documents are set to fill up two tractor-trailer trucks. | ||
| Who sent the money to the university to archive and maintain these records? | ||
| But I don't know what's in the documents. | ||
|
unidentified
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He falls over. | |
| Okay. | ||
| That was good. | ||
| I wasn't expecting that. | ||
| He falls off the truck. | ||
| Okay, Claude Van Damme. | ||
|
unidentified
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All right. | |
| So, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to today. | ||
| We actually were not aware that this was going on until after the show yesterday. | ||
| And so we are live today for the Robert Herr Report. | ||
| Let's call it the hurricane. | ||
| For Joe Biden, happening live very, very soon in Washington, D.C. Today is Tuesday, March 12, 2024. | ||
| Special Counsel Robert Herr will testify live on Capitol Hill. | ||
| We'll cover it today on the show. | ||
| We'll go live, obviously, to Capitol Hill and see what the man has to say. | ||
| Although we do have a preview. | ||
| We have a massive preview. | ||
| The lies are now collapsing in on themselves. | ||
| Here's what happens. | ||
| When you build a cathedral of lies about yourself, And about some, you know, incident or about some type of narrative, eventually those lies all come collapsing in. | ||
| This happens all the time. | ||
| It is the iron law of liars. | ||
| It's why it's probably good to just not lie, right? | ||
| Is that eventually you will be found out, and either way, on the Day of Judgment, you'll be found out. | ||
| And that Day of Judgment is here. | ||
| Apparently, the Secret Service totally disputed like tons of stuff that Liz Cheney shoved into the January 6th report, forced various members of the administration like Cassidy Hutchinson to lie to Congress and to make up and manufacture stories. | ||
| So ladies and gentlemen, we'll cover all of it today. | ||
| My name is Benny Johnson and this is The Benny Show. | ||
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| Sign up today. | ||
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| Ladies and gentlemen, Robert Herr is in the house. | ||
| The hurricane arriving on Capitol Hill. | ||
| Seconds ago, there he is. | ||
| This is the man who, if you need a reminder, said that Joe Biden couldn't remember the death of his son, couldn't remember who he was, couldn't remember where he was, couldn't remember, well, very important moments in the Obama administration, in his life, that Joe Biden was so mentally inept he couldn't stand trial. | ||
| So we have a preview here of what... | ||
| Joe Biden is going to, I'm sorry, what Robert Herr is going to say about Joe Biden. | ||
| Herr defends Biden probe saying he didn't sanitize final report. | ||
| Ladies and gentlemen, Special Counsel Robert Herr will testify in Congress, and we will go live to his testimony, that he did not sanitize his explanation of why he declined to levy criminal charges of Joe Biden for his handling of classified materials. | ||
| He decided not to charge Joe Biden. | ||
| But Joe Biden did mishandle classified materials, and he will testify to that. | ||
| Hers final report, which described Biden as an elderly man with poor memory, ignited a political firestorm upon its release. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Why? | ||
| We live in 1984. | ||
| We live inside of the Ministry of Truth. | ||
| Right? | ||
| Like, don't believe the sights and sounds of your eyes and ears. | ||
| Don't believe them! | ||
| Ladies and gentlemen, believe only the official narratives from the state. | ||
| From the party. | ||
| Like, why is this even remotely controversial? | ||
| Joe Biden can't go up flights of stairs. | ||
| Joe Biden regularly falls over. | ||
| Joe Biden, like, has moments where he can't remember who he is or where he is regularly, live on camera. | ||
| Democrats live inside of this, like, teeny little bubble wrap, hermetically sealed. | ||
| Like, they don't live in real world. | ||
| They live in a fake world. | ||
| And I like that because it's easier to live inside of a fake manufactured world where everything is just the way you say it is than to accept reality, which is that you put a guy with dementia inside of the White House. | ||
| He's now the resident of the White House and he's collapsing. | ||
| And all your little plans, your little orange man bad is collapsing. | ||
| You didn't like the guy because of his skin color. | ||
| You all have mental illnesses. | ||
| Your brains have been broken by the corporate press. | ||
| You're all sheep. | ||
| You like to be spoon-fed like the birds in the nest on the Nature Channel by the corporate press. | ||
| Like the mom puking into the kids' mouths. | ||
| Ladies and gentlemen, here's going to be some truth. | ||
| This is going to be some hard truth, and here's why we are broadcasting this today, ladies and gentlemen. | ||
| Let's go to the hearing. | ||
| Just kicked off Jim Jordan presiding. | ||
|
unidentified
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I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, our God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Got Jerry Nadler up there. | ||
| And without objection, Chairman Comer and Ranking Member Raskin will be permitted to participate in today's hearing for the purposes of making opening statements and asking questions of the witness. | ||
| They each will receive three minutes for an opening statement and five minutes to question the witness. | ||
| The chair now recognizes himself for an opening statement. | ||
| Robert Heer was appointed to special counsel on January 12, 2023. | ||
| He had a fundamental question to address. | ||
| Did Joe Biden unlawfully retain classified information? | ||
| The answer? | ||
| Yes, he did. | ||
| Page one of Mr. Heer's report, he says this. | ||
| Our investigation uncovered evidence. | ||
| That President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen. | ||
| He further writes, Mr. Biden willfully retained marked classified documents about Afghanistan and handwritten notes in his notebooks which he stored in unsecure places in his home. | ||
| Joe Biden kept classified information, and Joe Biden failed to store classified information properly. | ||
| Mr. Herr made these determinations after interviewing 147 witnesses. | ||
| He examined 7 million documents, including emails, text messages, photographs, videos, toll records, and other materials from both classified and unclassified sources. | ||
| But there's more. | ||
| Joe Biden not only kept information he wasn't allowed to keep, and he not only failed to secure that information properly, he also shared it with people who weren't allowed to see it. | ||
| Shared that information with his ghostwriter. | ||
| And remember, this is information that only individuals with a security clearance are supposed to see. | ||
| Mr. Hur told us on page 200 of his report that it's the kind of information That, quote, risk serious damage to America's national security. | ||
| What did Joe Biden have to say about all this? | ||
| What was his explanation? | ||
| On page 94 of Mr. Herr's report, Joe Biden said he took his notebooks with him after his vice presidency because, quote, they're mine. | ||
| And every president before me has done the same exact thing. | ||
| Never mind the fact that he had never been president. | ||
| Joe Biden felt he was entitled. | ||
| You can almost hear it. | ||
| You can feel the arrogance in this statement. | ||
| They're mine. | ||
| But even with all that, Mr. Hurd chose not to bring charges. | ||
| As he did in our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory. | ||
| A forgetful old man who Mr. Hur said did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended, and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term as vice president began. | ||
| Mr. Hur produced a 345-page report, but in the end it boils down to a few key facts. | ||
| Joe Biden kept classified information. | ||
| Joe Biden failed to properly secure classified information. | ||
| And Joe Biden shared classified information with people he wasn't supposed to. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you. | |
| Joe Biden broke the law. | ||
| But because he's a forgetful old man who would appear sympathetic to a jury, Mr. Herr chose not to bring charges. | ||
| Mr. Herr, we think it's important that you be able to respond to President Biden's response to your report. | ||
| So we're going to play a short video. | ||
| Mr. President Biden's press conference after your report was released, because there's things in this press conference that the President of the United States says that are directly contradicted by what you found in your report. | ||
| So if we could play that video. | ||
| Hey, everybody. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good evening. | |
| Let me say a few things before I take your questions. | ||
| As you know, the special counsel released his findings today about their look into my handling of classified documents. | ||
| President Biden, something the special counsel said in his report is that one of the reasons you were not charged is because, in his description, you are a well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory. | ||
| I'm well-meaning, and I'm an elderly man, and I know what the hell I'm doing. | ||
| I've been president. | ||
| Put this country back on its feet. | ||
| I don't need his recommendation. | ||
| How bad is your memory? | ||
| And can you continue as president? | ||
| My memory is so bad, I let you speak. | ||
| My memory is fine. | ||
| Take a look at what I've done since I've become president. | ||
| None of you thought I could pass any of the things I got passed. | ||
|
unidentified
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How'd that happen? | |
| You know, I guess I just forgot what was going on. | ||
|
unidentified
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Mr. President, Mr. President. | |
| Do voters have concerns about your age? | ||
|
unidentified
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How are you going to persuade them? | |
| And do you fear that this report is only going to fuel further concerns about your age? | ||
| Only by some of you. | ||
|
unidentified
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Mr. President, Mr. President, Mr. President, do you take responsibility for at least being careless with classified material? | |
| I take responsibility for not having seen exactly what my staff was doing. | ||
| There's-- it goes in and points out. | ||
| Things that appeared in my garage, things that came out of my home, things that were moved-- were moved not by me, but my staff. | ||
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unidentified
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But my staff, Mr president, Mr president for months when you were asked about your age, you would respond with the words. | |
| Watch me. | ||
| Well, many American people have been watching and they have expressed concerns about. | ||
| So why does it have to be you now? | ||
| What is your answer to that question? | ||
| Because I'm the most qualified person in this country to be president of the United States and finish the job I started. | ||
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unidentified
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Mr. President, why are you excusing the names of world leaders? | |
| Thank you, everyone. | ||
| I did not share classified information. | ||
| I did not share it. | ||
| With your ghostwriter. | ||
| With my ghostwriter, I did not. | ||
| Guarantee you did not. | ||
| But the special counsel said it. | ||
| No, he did not say that. | ||
|
unidentified
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Okay. | |
| Mr. President, let me answer your question. | ||
| The fact of the matter is, what I didn't want repeated, I didn't want him to not, and I didn't read it to him, was I had written a long memorandum to President Obama why we should not be in Afghanistan. | ||
| And I was of this multiple pages. | ||
| And so, what I was referring to-- I said "classified"-- I should have said it was-- should be private because it was a contact between the President and the Vice President as to what was going on. | ||
| That's what he's referring to. | ||
| It was not classified information in that document. | ||
|
unidentified
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That was not classic. | |
| When you look back at this incident, is there anything you would do differently now? | ||
| And do you think that a special prosecutor should have been appointed in the first place in both of these cases? | ||
| First of all, what I would have done is oversee the transfer of the material that was in my office, in my offices. | ||
| I should have done that. | ||
| If I go back, I didn't have the responsibility to that. | ||
| My staff was supposed to do that, and they referenced that in the report. | ||
| And my staff did not do it in the way that, for example, I didn't know how half the boxes got in my garage until I found out staff gathered them up, put them together, and took them to the garage of my home. | ||
| And all the stuff that was in my home was in filing cabinets that were either locked or able to be locked. | ||
| It was in my house. | ||
| It wasn't out in, like, in Mar-a-Lago in a public place where, and none of it was high classified. | ||
| Didn't have any of that red stuff on it, you know what I mean, around the corners? | ||
| None of that. | ||
| And so I wish I had paid more attention to how the documents were being moved and where. | ||
| I thought they were being moved to the archives. | ||
| I thought all of those being moved. | ||
| That's what I thought. | ||
| Now, what was the last part of your question? | ||
|
unidentified
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Whether a special counsel should have been appointed in this case and in the case of your rival, former president? | |
| I think a special counsel should have been appointed. | ||
| And the reason I think a special counsel should have been appointed is because I did not want to be in a position that they looked at Trump and weren't going to look at me, just like they looked at the vice president. | ||
| And the fact is they made a firm conclusion. | ||
| I did not break the law. | ||
| Period. | ||
| Thank you all very, very much. | ||
| Smart to play this clip. | ||
| Smart to play this clip. | ||
|
unidentified
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Okay. | |
| I'm of the view, as you know, that the conduct of the response in the Gaza Strip has been over the top. | ||
| I think that, as you know, initially, the president of Mexico, Sisi, did not want to open up the gate to allow humanitarian material to get in. | ||
| President of Mexico! | ||
| Let them make them part of the Middle East and recognize them fully in return for certain things that the United States would commit to do. | ||
| And the commitment that we were proposing to do related to two items. | ||
| I'm not going to go in detail, but one of them was to deal with the protection against their arch enemy to the northwest and northeast, I should say. | ||
| The second one, by providing ammunition and material for them to defend themselves. | ||
| Coincidentally, that's the time frame when this broke out. | ||
| I have no proof of what I'm about to say. | ||
| But it's not a reasonable suspect that the Hamas understood what was about to take place and wanted to break it up before it happened. | ||
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unidentified
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Yeah, Joe Biden was about to bring world peace. | |
| Biden was about to bring world peace. | ||
| That's enough to prove that the guy has dementia. | ||
| The chair now recognizes the ranking member, Mr. Nadler, for an opening statement. | ||
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unidentified
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Good luck. | |
| Mr. Vegetable. | ||
|
unidentified
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Such admiration for the president that you allowed him to take the first 10 minutes of this hearing. | |
| Mr. Chairman, House Republicans may be desperate to convince America that white conservative men are on the losing end of a two tiered justice system. | ||
| A theory that appeals to the MAGA crowd, but has no basis in reality. | ||
| But your comments today make me wonder if you have read the special counsel's report at all. | ||
| Her report does help us draw a distinction between President Biden and Donald Trump. | ||
| Just not the one you want. | ||
| Two distinctions, actually. | ||
| First, the report is clear that, quote, at no point did the special counsel find evidence that Mr. Biden intended or had reason to believe the information would be used to injure the United States or to benefit a foreign nation, close quote. | ||
| With respect to the classified documents found in President Biden's possession, quote, the decision to decline criminal charges was straightforward, close quote. | ||
| And with respect to the special counsel's investigation, quote, Mr. Biden turned in classified documents to the National Archives and the Department of Justice, consented to the search of multiple locations, including his homes, sat for a voluntary interview, and in other ways cooperated with the investigation, close quote. | ||
| President Biden acted responsibly, cooperated completely, and the decision to decline criminal justice, to decline criminal charges was relatively There's a Freudian slip right there. | ||
| The Hur report represents the complete and total exoneration of President Biden. | ||
| And how does that record contrast with President Trump, the documents he retained, and the criminal charges pending against him in Florida? | ||
| We know that Trump deliberately took large amounts of classified information from the White House. | ||
| He has admitted as much, occasionally pretending that he classified this information without telling anyone on his way out the door. | ||
| We know that he stored that information around Mar-a-Lago in the craziest of places. | ||
| On the ballroom stage, spilled across the floor of an unlocked closet next to the toilet. | ||
| We know that he showed classified military plans to an author interviewing him at Bedminster. | ||
| Quote, as president, I could have declassified it. | ||
| Trump! | ||
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unidentified
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Now I can't, you know, but this is still a secret. | |
| Still a secret. | ||
| Close quote. | ||
| So much for the declassification theory. | ||
| We know from the indictment that Trump is alleged to have shared these classified documents with many other visitors to Mar-a-Lago. | ||
| And we know that, despite this outrageous conduct, the Department of Justice gave Trump every opportunity to avoid criminal charges. | ||
| Again, in the special counsel's words, quote, after being given multiple chances to return classified documents and avoid prosecution, Mr. Trump allegedly did the opposite. | ||
| He not only refused to return the documents for many months, but he also obstructed justice by enlisting others to destroy evidence and then to lie about it. | ||
| Why did the president charge former President Trump but not President Biden? | ||
| Not because of some vast conspiracy, not because the so-called deep state was out to get him, but because former President Trump was fundamentally incapable. | ||
| of taking advantage of even one of the many, many chances he was given to avoid those charges. | ||
| Which brings me to the second distinction this report helps us draw between President Biden and Donald Trump. | ||
| Simply put, President Biden had the mental acuity to navigate this situation. | ||
| Donald Trump did not. | ||
| Much has been made of the special counsel's gratuitous comments about President Biden's age. | ||
| But let's set the context. | ||
| After returning every classified document, after opening his home to federal investigators, while simultaneously managing the first hours of the crisis in Israel, President Biden volunteered to sit through a five-hour interview with the special counsel. | ||
| I believe, as is his habit, that President Biden probably committed a verbal slip or two during the interview. | ||
| And I'm not sure any of that matters, because when the interview was over, Mr. Herr completely exonerated President Biden. | ||
| And then, there is Donald Trump. | ||
| What kind of man bungles not one, but dozens of opportunities to avoid criminal liability? | ||
| What must that say about his mental state? | ||
| Here, too, the record speaks for itself. | ||
| One of the great memories of all time. | ||
|
unidentified
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James Webb. | |
| I don't remember the names. | ||
|
unidentified
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I don't remember the name. | |
| Viktor Orban. | ||
| Did anyone ever hear of him? | ||
| He's the leader of Turkey. | ||
| By the way, they never report to the crowd on January 6th. | ||
|
unidentified
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You know, Nikki Haley. | |
| Nikki Haley is in charge of security. | ||
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unidentified
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Three years later, ladies and ladies. | |
| How about that? | ||
| Did you actually have a one-on-one with Komi then? | ||
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unidentified
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Not much. | |
| Not even that I remember. | ||
|
unidentified
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I like vecinos! | |
| We have languages coming into our country. | ||
| We have nobody that even speaks those languages. | ||
| They're truly foreign languages. | ||
| Nobody speaks them. | ||
| Saudi Arabia and Russia. | ||
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unidentified
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We'll repeat too. | |
| I have a really good memory. | ||
|
unidentified
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Your next wife was a woman by the name of Marla Maples. | |
| That's right. | ||
| Do you recall what years you were married to Ms. Maples? | ||
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unidentified
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Um... | |
| It's called, like, Up Here, and it's called Memory, and it's called Other Things. | ||
| So you don't remember saying you have one of the best members? | ||
| I don't remember that. | ||
| And Putin, you know, has so little respect for Obama that he's starting to throw around the nuclear war, Terry. | ||
| You heard that, nuclear. | ||
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unidentified
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We have to win in November. | |
| Well, we're not going to have Pennsylvania. | ||
| They'll change the name. | ||
| I talked to Putin a lot. | ||
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unidentified
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Did you ask him that? | |
| I don't remember that. | ||
| I saw that this morning. | ||
| I don't remember asking him that question. | ||
| I have a good memory and all that stuff, like a great memory. | ||
| For 20 years, they were fighting ISIS. | ||
|
unidentified
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I defeated ISIS in four weeks. | |
| And we did with Obama. | ||
| We won an election that everyone said couldn't be won. | ||
|
unidentified
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I'm not cognitively. | |
| And you know what? | ||
| Where I am, you're going to show us. | ||
| You're going to be the first people. | ||
| I know my people. | ||
|
unidentified
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You'll say, all right, Trump, you did a good job. | |
| Get the hell out of here. | ||
| That's it. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you. | |
| Of course, Adler has. | ||
|
unidentified
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Who is incapable of avoiding criminal liability. | |
| A man who is wholly unfit for office. | ||
| And a man who, at the very least... | ||
| Or to think twice before accusing others of cognitive decline. | ||
| Thank you for being here today, Mr. Hur. | ||
| Thank you for illuminating a stark choice for this country in the months to come. | ||
| I look forward to your testimony, and I yield back. | ||
| The gentleman yields back. | ||
| The chair now recognizes the chairman of the Oversight Committee, Mr. Comer, for an opening statement. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| In August 2020, President Biden questioned in a 60-minute interview... | ||
| How anyone can be that irresponsible when asked about classified documents in the possession of former President Trump. | ||
| But when President Biden said this, he knew that he had stashed classified materials in several unsecured locations for years dating back to his time as vice president and even as a U.S. senator. | ||
| President Biden, the White House, and his personal attorneys have not been honest with the American people about his willful retention of classified material and continue to hide information from Congress. | ||
| President Biden's attorneys claimed to have first discovered classified material at Penn Biden Center on November 2, 2022. | ||
| However, President Biden and his lawyers kept it secret from the American people before the midterm elections. | ||
| CBS News broke the story in January 2023, leaving Americans to wonder if the White House had any intention of ever disclosing that President Biden hoarded classified documents for years. | ||
| One of my first actions after becoming chairman of the House Oversight Committee was to launch an investigation into President Biden's mishandling of classified documents. | ||
| This investigation started before Special Counsel Herr was named. | ||
| And what we found is alarming. | ||
| Information obtained through multiple transcribed interviews conducted by the Oversight Committee contradict the White House's and President Biden's personal attorney's narrative about the discovery of classified documents at the Penn Biden Center. | ||
| In fact, the real timeline began in the spring of 2021, not November 2022, as the White House claimed. | ||
| Additionally, the classified documents were not kept in a locked closet, as asserted by the White House. | ||
| We've also learned that five White House employees and a Department of Defense employee were involved in the early stages of coordinating the organizing, moving, and removing of boxes that were later found to contain classified materials. | ||
| There's no reasonable explanation as to why so many White House employees were concerned with retrieving boxes they believed only contained personal documents and materials. | ||
| Why did President Biden keep these specific documents in unsecure locations for years? | ||
| Many questions remain, but now the White House is obstructing Congress as we seek the truth for the American people. | ||
| We've subpoenaed former White House counsel Dana Remus to appear for a deposition to provide information to our committee. | ||
| But the White House is seeking to block her testimony. | ||
| We've also subpoenaed the Department of Justice for audio recordings and transcript of President Biden's interview with Special Counsel Hur. | ||
| These were due the morning of the State of the Union. | ||
| Only this morning, a couple of hours before today's hearing, the Department of Justice finally provided the transcript of President Biden's interview with Special Counsel Hur. | ||
| The timing is not coincidental. | ||
| Although we've had little time to review the transcripts from what we have seen, it is clear that the White House did not want Special Counsel Herr's final report to be released. | ||
| The White House has refused to be transparent with the American people about the President's mishandling of classified documents. | ||
| And worse, they have appeared to have lied about the timeline, about who handled the documents, and even about the contents of President Biden's interview with Special Counsel Herr. | ||
| That is why today's hearing is important. | ||
| Transparency is what we seek today, and we look forward to Special Counsel Herr's testimony. | ||
| I yield back. | ||
| The gentleman yields back. | ||
| The chair now recognizes the ranking member of the Oversight Committee, Mr. Raskin, for his opening statement. | ||
| Thank you, Chairman. | ||
| Raskin, here we go. | ||
| Basic points that all Americans need to understand about Mr. Herr's report. | ||
| Number one, the Special Counsel exonerates President Biden. | ||
| The very first line of the report says it all. | ||
| Quote, We conclude that no criminal charges are warranted in this matter. | ||
| We would reach the same conclusion even if Department of Justice policy did not foreclose criminal charges against a sitting president. | ||
| Second, the report establishes that President Biden offered complete and unhesitating cooperation with the special counsel's investigation. | ||
| The Justice Department and the National Archives were proactively notified of the classified documents, and they were turned over. | ||
| The president allowed the FBI to search his homes, and he sat for a voluntary interview for more than five hours on October 8th and October 9th, even as he was busy responding to Hamas' vicious terrorist attack in Israel. | ||
| The report thus demonstrates President Biden's complete devotion to the rule of law and his respect for a fair and independent Department of Justice. | ||
| President Biden did not assert executive privilege or claim absolute immunity for presidential crimes. | ||
| He did not hide boxes of documents under his bed or in a bathtub. | ||
| He did not fight investigators, nor did he seek to redact a single word of Mr. Herr's report. | ||
| He consented to the search of numerous... | ||
| Locations, including his homes, and he did everything he could to cooperate, not obstruct. | ||
| Third, special counsel Herr repeatedly emphasizes that President Biden's conduct contrasts sharply with that of former President Trump. | ||
| Herr observes that, unlike President Biden, quote, the allegations set forth in the indictment of Mr. Trump, if proven, would clearly establish not only Mr. Trump's willfulness, but also serious aggravating factors. | ||
| He sets forth these points of difference in detail, quote, most notably after being given multiple chances to return classified documents and avoid prosecution, Trump allegedly did the opposite. | ||
| According to the indictment, he not only refused to return the documents for months, But he also obstructed justice by enlisting others to destroy evidence and then to lie about it, unquote. | ||
| He returned only a portion of subpoenaed documents and deliberately withheld the rest. | ||
| Unlike President Biden, Trump did not alert the National Archives or DOJ of the documents, nor did he turn over all the classified materials in his possession. | ||
| He did not agree to sit down for a voluntary interview with the special counsel. | ||
| He never consented to a search of his home. | ||
| On the contrary, Trump suggested that his attorney hide or destroy evidence requested by the FBI and the grand jury. | ||
| Trump carefully instructed his aide to move boxes of classified documents to hide them from the FBI. | ||
| Trump tried to delete incriminating security tape footage from Mar-a-Lago, and he got his attorney to provide a false certification. | ||
| He did not. | ||
| Given that this report is so damning in the contrast between Biden and Trump, it is hard for me to see why our colleagues think that this hearing advances their flailing and embarrassing quest to impeach the President of the United States. | ||
| What America sees today is evidence of one president who believes in the rule of law and works to protect it, and one who has nothing but contempt for the rule of law and acts solely in pursuit of his own constantly multiplying corrupt schemes. | ||
| I yield back. | ||
| The gentleman yields back. | ||
| Without objection, all other opening statements will be included in the record. | ||
| All right, here we go. | ||
| The Honorable Robert Herr was appointed as a special counsel in January 2023 to investigate the removal and retention of classified documents discovered at the Penn-Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. | ||
| He previously served as the Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General at the Department of Justice and as the United States Attorney for the District of Maryland. | ||
| He was a law clerk for Chief Justice William Rehnquist and also clerked for Judge Alex Kaczynski on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. | ||
| We welcome our witness and thank him for appearing today. | ||
| We'll begin by swearing you in. | ||
| Mr. Hur, would you please stand? | ||
| Raise your right hand. | ||
| Do you swear or affirm under penalty of perjury that the testimony you're about to give is true and correct to the best of your knowledge, information, and beliefs? | ||
| So help you God. | ||
| Let the record reflect that the witness has answered in the affirmative. | ||
| Thank you, and you can be seated. | ||
| Please know that your written testimony will be entered into the record in its entirety. | ||
| Accordingly, we ask that you summarize your testimony. | ||
| Mr. Hur, you may begin with your opening statement. | ||
| Here comes the hurricane. | ||
|
unidentified
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Let's go. | |
| Make sure you get that mic on if you could, Mr. Hur. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Chairman. | |
| Chairman Jordan, Ranking Member Nadler, Chairman Comer, Ranking Member Raskin, members of the committee, good morning. | ||
| I'm privileged to have served our country for the majority of my career, a decade and a half, most of those years, with the Department of Justice. | ||
| I have served as a line prosecutor, a supervisor, the principal associate deputy attorney general, a United States attorney, and a special counsel. | ||
| I've served in these roles with gratitude as the son of immigrants to this country, the first member of my family to be born here. | ||
| My parents grew up in Korea and were young children during the Korean War. | ||
| My father remembers being hungry and grateful for the food that American GIs shared with him and his siblings. | ||
| My mother fled what is now North Korea in her own mother's arms, heading south to safety. | ||
| My parents eventually met, married, and came to the U.S., seeking a better life for themselves and for their children. | ||
| Ladies and gentlemen, we are switching feeds so that we can see Robert Herr. | ||
| Give us just one moment. | ||
| We apologize for this. | ||
| For some reason. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There we go. | |
| No matter the role, no matter the administration, I have applied the same standards and the same impartiality. | ||
| My respect for the Justice Department and my commitment to this country are why I agreed to serve as special counsel when asked by the Attorney General. | ||
| I resolved to do the work as I did all my work for the department. | ||
| Fairly. | ||
| Thoroughly and professionally, with close attention to the policies and practices that govern department prosecutors. | ||
| My team and I conducted a thorough, independent investigation. | ||
| We identified evidence that the president willfully retained classified materials after the end of his vice presidency when he was a private citizen. | ||
| This evidence included an audio-recorded conversation during which Mr. Biden told his ghostwriter that he had Brutal. | ||
| said this, he was a private citizen speaking to his ghostwriter in his private rental home in Virginia. | ||
| We did not, however, identify evidence that rose to the level of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. | ||
| Because the evidence fell short of that standard, I declined to recommend criminal charges against Mr. Biden. | ||
| The department's regulations required me to write a confidential report explaining my decision to the Attorney General. | ||
| I understood that my explanation about this case had to include rigorous, detailed, and thorough analysis. | ||
| In other words, I needed to show my work, just as I would expect any prosecutor to show his or her work explaining the decision to prosecute or not. | ||
| The need to show my work was especially strong here. | ||
| The Attorney General had appointed me to investigate the actions of the Attorney General's boss, the sitting President of the United States. | ||
| I knew that for my decision to be credible, I could not simply announce that I recommended no criminal charges and leave it at that. | ||
| I needed to explain why. | ||
| My report reflects my best effort to explain why I declined to recommend charging President Biden. | ||
| I analyze the evidence as prosecutors routinely do by assessing its strengths and weaknesses, including by anticipating the ways in which the president's defense lawyers might poke holes in the government's case, if there were a trial, and seek to persuade jurors that the government could not prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. | ||
| There has been a lot of attention paid to language in the report about the president's memory, so let me say a few words about that. | ||
| My task was to determine whether the president retained or disclosed national defense information willfully. | ||
| That means knowingly and with the intent to do something the law forbids. | ||
| I could not make that determination without assessing the president's state of mind. | ||
| For that reason, I had to consider the president's memory, an overall mental state, and how a jury likely would perceive his memory and mental state in a criminal trial. | ||
| These are the types of issues that prosecutors analyze every day. | ||
| And because these issues were important to my ultimate decision, I had to include a discussion of them in my report to the Attorney General. | ||
| The evidence and the President himself put his memory squarely at issue. | ||
| We interviewed the President and asked him about his recorded statement. | ||
| "I just found all the classified stuff downstairs." He told us that he didn't remember saying that to his ghostwriter. | ||
| He also said he didn't remember finding any classified material in his home after his vice presidency. | ||
| And he didn't remember anything about how classified documents about Afghanistan made their way into his garage. | ||
| My assessment in the report about the relevance of the president's memory was necessary and accurate and fair. | ||
| Most importantly, what I wrote is what I believe the evidence shows and what I expect jurors would perceive and believe. | ||
| I did not sanitize my explanation, nor did I disparage the President unfairly. | ||
| I explained to the Attorney General my decision and the reasons for it. | ||
| That's what I was required to do. | ||
| I took the same approach when I compared the evidence regarding President Biden to the Department's allegations against former President Trump. | ||
| There, too, I called it like I saw it. | ||
| As a prosecutor, I had to consider relevant precedents and to explain why different facts justify different outcomes. | ||
| That is what I did in my report. | ||
| I'm confident the analysis set forth in chapters 11, 12, and 13 of my report provides a thorough evaluation and explanation of the evidence, and I encourage everyone to read it to inform their opinions of the report. | ||
| Prosecutors rarely write public reports or testify about their investigations. | ||
| That is the Justice Department's long-standing policy, and it protects important interests. | ||
| My team and I prepared the report to the Attorney General with care, and the report stands as the primary source of information. | ||
| My responses today will be limited to clarifying information for the committee. | ||
| I will refrain from speculating or commenting on areas outside the scope of the investigation. | ||
| Nor will I discuss what investigative steps we did or did not take beyond what's in the report. | ||
| In conclusion, I want to express my heartfelt thanks to the attorneys, agents, analysts, and professional staff who helped us do our work fairly, thoroughly, and independently. | ||
| I am grateful and privileged to have served with them. | ||
| I single out for particular thanks Deputy Special Counsel Mark Crickbaum, a former United States attorney himself, who brought great wisdom, skill, and judgment to our task. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I welcome your questions. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Hur. | ||
| The chair now recognizes the gentleman. | ||
| Brutal! | ||
| North Dakota for five minutes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| How could that possibly happen? | ||
| How could anyone be that irresponsible? | ||
| And I thought, what data was in there that could compromise sources, methods, and it's just totally irresponsible? | ||
| That was President Biden's statement about Donald Trump and the classified documents. | ||
| Mr. Hur, classified documents were found at the Penn Biden Center? | ||
| That's correct. | ||
| They were found in President Biden's garage? | ||
| In Wilmington, Delaware, yes. | ||
| And in his basement den? | ||
| Also in the same home, yes. | ||
| And his main floor office? | ||
| Correct. | ||
| And his third floor den? | ||
| Correct. | ||
| At the University of Delaware? | ||
| Correct. | ||
|
unidentified
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And at the Biden Institute? | |
| Correct. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And the elements of the crime for this, I mean, we get into all of this, but the elements of the crime are pretty simple, right? | |
| President Biden had unauthorized possession of a document writing or note. | ||
| That's correct. | ||
| Correct. | ||
| And that the document writing or note related to national defense. | ||
| Correct. | ||
| And that the defendant, and we may talk about the willfully part here in a second, retained the document writing or note and failed to deliver it to an employee or officer entitled to receive it. | ||
| Correct. | ||
| There is a willfulness intent element, as you say. | ||
| But those are the elements of the crime. | ||
| Including the intent element, yes. | ||
| And there are at least two different quotes, right, where he told this gross writer, and this is in your report. | ||
| In a matter of fact, and this is February 16, 2017, that he had just found all this classified stuff downstairs. | ||
| He did make that statement that was captured on an audio recording. | ||
| And on April 10, 2017, Biden read aloud a classified passage related to a 2015 meeting in the Situation Room. | ||
| That is in the report, yes. | ||
| And these are national security documents. | ||
| Afghanistan, I mean, has been mentioned a whole bunch of those things, right? | ||
| Correct. | ||
| And at one point in time, his personal attorneys and the DOJ attorneys argued about notes taking all of the different things and compared it to Reagan. | ||
| I'm sorry, could you repeat that, Congressman? | ||
| President Biden's attorneys, personal attorneys, talked about the notes and why they didn't actually account for the Presidential Records Act, but you found that argument in your report. | ||
| It seems a little persuasive, but you eventually said, no, the executive order trumps, right? | ||
| We did set forth an analysis of the governing law and ultimately concluded that the Executive Order 13526 does apply and did govern former Vice President Biden at the time. | ||
| So you have audio recording from his ghostwriter where the president acknowledges that the information he has is classified and he's sharing with his ghostwriter. | ||
| We have an audio recording capturing a statement from Mr. Biden saying to his ghostwriter in February of 2017. | ||
| Quote, I just found all the classified stuff downstairs, end quote. | ||
| And then again, reciting passages from a meeting in this situation. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And those are in President Biden's own words. | ||
| Correct. | ||
| And the ghostwriter has no classified clearance to anything, correct? | ||
| That is our understanding that Mr. Zwanitzer was not authorized to receive classified information. | ||
| Okay, so the elements are possessed documents, the documents related to national defense, and willfully retain those documents, and in this case, shared them with somebody who was not allowed to receive them. | ||
| There are different subsections of 18 U.S.C. | ||
| 793. | ||
| One subsection relates to the willful retention. | ||
| And another relates to disclosure of national defense information. | ||
| Well, I mean, the willful retention. | ||
| We've got the Penn Biden Center, the garage, the basement den, the main floor office, the third floor den, the University of Delaware, and the Biden Institute. | ||
| We have a 50-year career of a person who has not been very great at dealing with classified documents even prior to his time as vice president when he was in the U.S. Senate, right? | ||
| We do address each set of those documents in the report, Congressman. | ||
| I think this is really important because the difference is it appears just from reading the report, and we heard all about exonerated and all those different things, it appears from the report he met every actual element of the crime. | ||
| So I want to talk about the department principles on federal prosecution because that actually has nothing to do with the underlying elements, correct? | ||
| It's whether or not you can prove this at trial. | ||
| Under the department's justice manual and the principles of federal prosecution, A prosecutor has to assess the evidence and determine whether, in his or her judgment, the probable outcome will be a conviction at trial. | ||
| So, whether or not you meet the elements of the crime, which I think it's clear that he does, the second part of this is this, and that's where it gets into the sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory. | ||
| You could have just said, we don't prosecute sitting presidents, but you did not. | ||
| And you entered this, but that doesn't have anything to do with the actual elements of the crime. | ||
| That has to do with getting a conviction at trial, correct? | ||
| Well, Congressman, part and parcel of a prosecutor's judgment as to whether or not a conviction is the probable outcome of a trial is assessing how the evidence identified during the investigation lines up with the elements and what proof can be offered to a jury during a trial. | ||
| Sure, but his well-meaning elderly old man has nothing to do with the underlying elements of the crime. | ||
| Well, it certainly has... | ||
| It's a presentation to the jury. | ||
| It certainly has something... | ||
| Tellman can respond. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It certainly has something to do with the way that a jury is going to perceive and receive and consider and make conclusions based on evidence at trial, Congressman. | |
| The gentleman has expired. | ||
| The chair now recognizes the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, Mr. Nadler. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Mr. Hur, in your written testimony, you say that you found some evidence that the president might have willfully retained classified materials at the end of his vice presidency, correct? | ||
| Correct. | ||
| Look at the masks. | ||
| It's 2024. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Look at the masks. | |
| That was my judgment. | ||
| Would you agree that there's no such thing as being a little bit charged for a crime? | ||
| You're either charged... | ||
| Well, you are not charged, correct? | ||
| Yes, it is binary. | ||
| Either one is not charged or charged. | ||
| So just to be clear, because so many people have taken your words out of context, your ultimate conclusion was that President Biden could not be charged with a crime because even after your thorough investigation, you could not find sufficient evidence to charge him, correct? | ||
| My conclusion was that based on my evaluation of the evidence... | ||
| Don't feel about it, correct? | ||
| I'm sorry, Congressman, I didn't hear your last question. | ||
| I said based on your conclusion... | ||
| Your ultimate conclusion is that President Biden could not be charged with a crime because even after your thorough investigation, you could not find sufficient evidence to charge him. | ||
| Correct or not correct? | ||
| My ultimate conclusion was that criminal charges were not warranted. | ||
| Correct. | ||
| Now let's talk about why. | ||
| I have limited time, so please, when I say correct or not correct, answer the question. | ||
| Now let's talk about why, in sharp contrast to President Biden, President Trump faces 40 charges related to the unlawful retention of highly classified documents. | ||
| That is, of course, apart from the additional 51 counts in cases alleging that he incited a rebellion and lied about his finances. | ||
| You found that President Biden reported the possible classified documents in his possession to the FBI as soon as he learned of them, correct? | ||
| There was a voluntary disclosure by the President's counsel to authorities relating to the discovery of classified documents of the Ben Bidens. | ||
| Let's contrast this with President Trump. | ||
| Congressman, I am not intimately familiar with the facts relating to former President Trump. | ||
| I'm prepared to comment on them to the extent that I address them in the report. | ||
| In other words, part of understanding President Biden's intent... | ||
| was that he quickly and voluntarily returned those documents to the government, correct? | ||
| That was a factor in our analysis, yes. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| By way of contrast, to the best of your knowledge, why did the Department of Justice seek a warrant to search Mar-a-Lago? | ||
| Congressman, I am not familiar with those deliberations. | ||
| That is a matter that I had no participation in. | ||
| Well, I'll tell you it was because they were concerned that Trump had lied about possession of those documents and might conceal or destroy them. | ||
| Special Counsel Smith found that President Trump obstructed his investigation by suggesting that his attorney falsely represent to the FBI and grand jury that Trump did not have the documents called for by the grand jury subpoena. | ||
| At any point in your investigation, did you have any reason to believe that President Biden lied to you? | ||
| I do address in my report one response the President gave to a question that we had posed to him that we deemed to be not credible. | ||
| Was it clear he didn't lie? | ||
| I'm sorry, Congressman. | ||
| The report is clear that he didn't lie or that he caused his staff to lie to you and that he didn't cause his staff to lie to you. | ||
| Your report is clear on that. | ||
| You agree that causing someone to lie to the FBI is a classic example of obstruction of justice? | ||
| It is an example of obstruction, yes. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Trump also obstructed the Smith investigation by directing one of his employees to move boxes of documents to conceal them from Trump's attorney, from the FBI, and from the grand jury. | ||
| At any point in your investigation, We did not reach that conclusion. | ||
| It is an example of obstructing an investigation. | ||
| is an example of absurd. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Donald Trump instructed his staff to delete security footage so that the FBI and special counsel could not see how he had tried to move and hide documents. | ||
| Do you agree that attempting to delete video footage in this manner is plainly an attempt to obstruct an investigation? | ||
| This is not about Trump! | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't want to characterize the evidence in the case against former president. | |
| But if that happened, would you agree that deleting video footage is plainly an attempt to obstruct an investigation? | ||
| Congressman, it's the type of evidence that prosecutors would consider. | ||
| To sum up, Donald Trump is charged with willfully retaining classified documents and conspiring to conceal those documents. | ||
| And he's facing additional charges for lying to investigators. | ||
| Isn't that correct? | ||
| Those are allegations that are in a pending indictment against former President Trump. | ||
| And the reason why President Biden is not facing a single charge, Mr. Herr, is not because you went easy on him, but because after reviewing 7 million documents and interviewing nearly 150 witnesses, including the President himself, you could not prove that he had committed a crime. | ||
| I yield back. | ||
| Gentlemen, the gentleman from, Mr. McClintock, gentleman from California, is recognized. | ||
| Late-stage Trump derangement syndrome. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Is it now okay if I take on top secret documents, store them in my garage, and read portions of them to friends or associates? | |
| Congressman, I wouldn't recommend it, but I don't want to entertain any hypotheticals at this point. | ||
| Was it okay? | ||
| I mean, I can do that now under this new doctrine? | ||
| Again, Congressman, I wouldn't recommend that you do that, but... | ||
| Well, you've essentially said so in your report, and certainly it would be exculpatory if I simply told you, hey, I'm getting old. | ||
| I don't remember stuff the way I used to. | ||
| Congressman, I'm not here to get into hypotheticals. | ||
| I'm here to talk about the facts and the work that I did. | ||
| It was not a hypothetical. | ||
| This is the issue at hand. | ||
| You correctly noted in your report that former presidents and other senior officials have been given wide latitude in their possession of classified information, and I believe your decision not to prosecute Biden for the same offense is consistent with that precedent. | ||
| But the problem is that precedent changed with the administration's decision to prosecute Donald Trump. | ||
| And the irony is that as president, Trump had full discretion over handling classified material and full discretion in deciding which records to retain. | ||
| As a senator or vice president, Joe Biden didn't have that. | ||
| So now we get to this glaring double standard. | ||
| I think it would be toxic to the rule of law on its face if it was just two ordinary citizens. | ||
| But the fact that the only person being prosecuted for this offense happens to be the president's political opponent. | ||
| It makes this an unprecedented assault on our democracy. | ||
| This is the worst we could expect from a banana republic. | ||
| And I wonder how you square this. | ||
| Congressman, I do address, as I was required to as a prosecutor, a relevant precedent in the form of the alleged allegations and the indictment against former President Trump. | ||
| I set forth my explanation and my assessment and comparison of those precedents. | ||
| In my report, and I am not here to comment any further beyond what was in my report. | ||
| You said, for example, that there was no evidence beyond reasonable doubt. | ||
| Well, you got the fact that he had classified material in his possession and control in multiple settings for multiple years, that he told others he was aware of this, and that he shared that material with others. | ||
| The mind boggles at what Well, as I set forth at length in my explanations in chapters 11 and 12 of the report, my assessment is that the evidence, if presented at trial alongside potential defense arguments, would not probably result... | ||
| Well, that's one of the points you make is that President Biden's likely to be an elderly, sympathetic figure with a poor memory. | ||
| But how does that bear on any individual's guilt or innocence? | ||
| Isn't that, again, a question for a judge or jury to decide after guilt or innocence is determined? | ||
| And again, here's the problem. | ||
| Donald Trump's being prosecuted for exactly the same act that you've documented that Joe Biden committed. | ||
| Great question, Congressman. | ||
| If I understood your question correctly, you said, isn't that a question for a jury? | ||
| And it most certainly, through the lens of my... | ||
| My question is, does that bear on the guilt or innocence of an individual? | ||
| It certainly bears on how a jury is going to receive and perceive and make decisions. | ||
| So the answer to my earlier question is correct. | ||
| All I have to do when I'm caught taking home classified materials to say, I'm sorry, Mr. Herbert, but I'm getting old. | ||
| My memory's not so great. | ||
| Great question. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Congressman. | |
| This is the doctrine that you've established in our laws now, and it's frightening. | ||
| Congressman, my intent is certainly not to establish any sort of doctrine. | ||
| I had a particular task. | ||
| I have a particular set of evidence to consider. | ||
| And make a judgment with respect to one particular set of evidence. | ||
| And that is what I did. | ||
| Well, Mr. Herr, here's the fine point of the matter. | ||
| The foundation of our justice system is equal justice under law. | ||
| That's what gives the law its respect and its legitimacy. | ||
| And without it, the law is simply force, devoid of any moral authority. | ||
| Justice is depicted as blindfolded for this very reason. | ||
| It doesn't matter who comes before her. | ||
| All are treated equally. | ||
| You destroy this foundation, and the rule of law becomes a sick mockery. | ||
| It becomes a weapon to wield against political rivals and a tool of despotism. | ||
| And I am desperately afraid that this decision of the Department of Justice has now crossed a very bright line. | ||
| And I yield back. | ||
| The gentleman yields back. | ||
| Chairman, I ask for unanimous consent to introduce the State of the Union into the hearing. | ||
| Without objection, that'll be introduced. | ||
| The ranking members are recognized for unanimous consent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that a copy of an article this morning's Washington Post entitled, Full Transcript of Biden's Special Counsel Interview Paints Nuanced Portrait. | |
| The president doesn't come across as absent-minded as her has made him out to be. | ||
| Without objection. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| The chair recognizes, now recognizes the general aide from California for five minutes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Mr. Herb, for being here today. | |
| I found your report very interesting, and I learned some things about it. | ||
| The law and the precedents, there are clear differences between the cases of and precedents set by Presidents Reagan, Trump, and Biden. | ||
| Now, it was widely known. | ||
| That President Reagan kept diaries from his presidency that included classified information. | ||
| What I didn't know and learned in your report was that the Department of Justice repeatedly described the diaries in public court filings as Mr. Reagan's personal records and that no agency ever attempted to remove his diaries. | ||
| That's on page 195 of your report. | ||
| Very interesting. | ||
| So, the investigation found that President Biden believed that his notebooks were his personal property, including work and political notes, reflections, to-do lists, and more, that he was entitled to take home. | ||
| You found that on page 232. | ||
| So, while much of his notebook was work-related, he still had some purely personal subjects, like, again, I quote, gut-wrenching. | ||
| Entities about the illness and death of his son, Beau. | ||
| And that's on page 82 and 253 of your report. | ||
| So it's clear, based on the Reagan precedent, that no criminal charges were awarded in this matter relative to personal notebooks. | ||
| Now, I want to be clear that although the notebooks contain some very personal information, and President Biden considered them as personal property, The President allowed your team to seize and review all of the notebooks you found. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| That is correct. | ||
| Now that's in stark contrast to ex-President Trump's case. | ||
| He obstructed and diverted all the investigations. | ||
| Now, you also interviewed President Biden about other classified documents you found outside his notebooks, didn't you? | ||
| Yes, Congresswoman. | ||
| So did the president tell you that he believed any documents other than his own handwritten work were his personal property? | ||
| Yes or no? | ||
| We did not hear that from the president during his interview. | ||
| So again, it's very different from ex-president Trump. | ||
| Ex-president Trump said all of the documents marked classified were his personal property. | ||
| President Biden did not consider documents that were produced by other entities with classification markings as his personal records. | ||
| Now, I think since the majority has tried to assert that there is a disparity based on politics and the differences in the prosecution, it's worth quoting page 11 of the report, which says, and I quote, Several material distinctions between Mr. Trump's case and Mr. Biden's case are clear. | ||
| Most notably, after being given multiple chances to return classified documents and avoid prosecution, Mr. Trump allegedly did the opposite. | ||
| According to the indictment, he not only refused to return the documents for many months, but he also obstructed justice by enlisting others to destroy evidence and then to lie about it. | ||
| That's on page 11. Quote, in contrast, Mr. Biden turned in classified documents to the National Archives and the Department of Justice, consented to the search of multiple locations, including his homes, sat for a voluntary interview, and in other ways, cooperated with the investigation. | ||
| It's clear that these cases are not the same. | ||
| Frankly, I was surprised to learn that some of the Classified documents were actually personal diaries that many executive officials have taken home with them because it was in their own handwriting. | ||
| It was what they produced. | ||
| And based on the Department of Justice public statements during the Reagan administration, it is understandable that a person could believe that their personal diaries that they produced We're not to be turned over, just as President Reagan did not turn them over. | ||
| So I appreciate your report. | ||
| I appreciate your being here, Mr. Herr. | ||
| And I would also like to ask Mr. Chairman a unanimous request to include in the record a September 11th letter from the Special Counsel to the President to Special Counsel Herr and also a letter to Merrick Garland. | ||
| Without objection. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And with that, Mr. Chairman, I see my time has expired and I yield back. | |
| The general lady yields back. | ||
| The chair is recognized. | ||
| Mr. Herr, why'd he do it? | ||
| Why did Joe Biden, in your words, willfully retain and disclose classified materials? | ||
| I mean, he knew the law. | ||
| Been in office like 50 years. | ||
| Five decades in the United States Senate. | ||
| Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. | ||
| Eight years as vice president. | ||
| He got briefed every day. | ||
| As vice president, he's been in the Situation Room. | ||
| In fact, you know he knew the rules because you said so on page 226. | ||
| President Biden was deeply familiar with the measures taken to safeguard classified documents. | ||
| And Joe Biden told us he knew the rules. | ||
| Mr. Armstrong said this earlier. | ||
| Joe Biden was deeply familiar with it. | ||
| You're exactly right, because he told us when Jack Smith goes after President Trump, Joe Biden says, how could this happen? | ||
| What data was in those documents that could compromise sources and methods? | ||
| It's irresponsible. | ||
| So Joe Biden knew the rules. | ||
| You know he knew the rules. | ||
| And Joe Biden told us he knew the rules. | ||
| So Mr. Hur, why did he break them? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Congressman, the conclusion as to exactly why? | |
| The President did what he did is not one that we explicitly address in the report. | ||
| The report explains my decision to the Attorney General that no criminal charges were warranted in this manner. | ||
| I think you did tell us. | ||
| I think you told us, Mr. Herr. | ||
| Page 231, you said this. | ||
| President Biden had strong motivations. | ||
| That's a key word. | ||
| We're getting a motive now. | ||
| President Biden had strong motivations to ignore... | ||
| The proper procedures for safeguarding the classified information in his notebooks. | ||
| Why did he have strong motivations? | ||
| Because, next word, because he decided months before leaving office to write a book. | ||
| To write a book. | ||
| That was his motive. | ||
| He knew the rules. | ||
| He broke them because he was writing a book. | ||
| And you further say, and he began meeting with the ghostwriter while he was still vice president. | ||
| There's the motive. | ||
| Mr. Herr, how much did President Biden get paid for his book? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Off the top of my head, I'm not sure if that information appears in the report. | |
| It sure does. | ||
| There's a dollar amount in there. | ||
| You remember? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It may be $8 million. | |
| $8 million. | ||
| Joe Biden had 8 million reasons to break the rules. | ||
| Took classified information and shared it with the guy who was writing the book. | ||
| That's why he knew the rules, but he broke them for $8 million in a book advance. | ||
| But you know what? | ||
| It wasn't just the money. | ||
| Joe Biden, here's this page 231, very next page. | ||
| Joe Biden, in your report, Joe Biden viewed his notebooks as an irreplaceable, contemporaneous record of the most important moments of his vice presidency. | ||
| He'd written this all down for the book, for the $8 million. | ||
| And the next thing you say in your report is, quote, such a record would buttress his legacy as a world leader. | ||
| You know what this is? | ||
| It wasn't just the money. | ||
| It wasn't just $8 million. | ||
| It was also his ego. | ||
| Pride and money is why he knowingly violated the rules. | ||
| The oldest motives in the book, pride and money. | ||
| You agree with that, Mr. Herr? | ||
| You wrote it in your report. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That language does appear in the report, and we did identify evidence supporting those assessments. | |
| You also had another interesting statement in your report. | ||
| You said Joe Biden... | ||
| I want to make sure I get this right. | ||
| Viewed himself as a man of presidential timber. | ||
| Remember that statement, Mr. Herr? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I believe that does appear in the report, at least in the executive summary. | |
| I think this is interesting. | ||
| Because here's the scary part. | ||
| Page 200. | ||
| I said this earlier in my opening statement. | ||
| Page 200. | ||
| Joe Biden, this is a quote, Joe Biden risked serious damage to America's national security when he shared information with his ghostwriter. | ||
| Shared it with his ghostwriter, the guy who was helping Joe Biden get $8 million. | ||
| And oh, by the way, Mr. Herr, what did that ghostwriter do with the information Joe Biden shared with him on his laptop? | ||
| What did he do after you were named special counsel? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Chairman, if you're referring to the audio recordings that Mr. Zwanitzer created of his conversations with Mr. Biden. | |
| Exactly what I'm referring to. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He slid, if I remember correctly, he slid. | |
| Those files into his recycle bin on his computer. | ||
| Tried to destroy the evidence, didn't he? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Correct. | |
| The very guy who was helping Joe Biden get the $8 million, the $8 million Joe Biden used, the motive for Joe Biden to disclose classified information, to retain classified information, which he definitely knew was against the law. | ||
| When you get named special counsel, what's that guy do? | ||
| He destroys the evidence. | ||
| That's the key takeaway in my mind. | ||
| That's a key takeaway. | ||
| I yield back. | ||
| Gentlemen from Maryland for five minutes. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Mr. Herr, your report starts with the line, we conclude that no criminal charges are warranted in this matter. | ||
| Have you had any reason to change your opinion about that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, no ranking member. | |
| You highlight the independence and support you got from the Attorney General and DOJ. | ||
| Have you changed your mind about that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I have not. | |
| The report describes President Biden's cooperation in your requests. | ||
| He allowed his homes to be searched. | ||
| He answered questions for hours in the midst of a global crisis. | ||
| Have you had any reason to change your mind about that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, ranking member. | |
| You also repeatedly contrast Biden's cooperation with the conduct of Donald Trump. | ||
| You say, most notably, after being given multiple chances to return classified documents and avoid prosecution, Mr. Trump allegedly did the opposite. | ||
| According to the indictment, he not only refused to return the documents for many months, but he also obstructed justice by enlisting others to destroy evidence and then to lie about it. | ||
| Have you had any reason to change your judgment about the differences between President Biden's cooperation and the former president's non-cooperation? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I continue to stand by those words in my report. | |
| With such a striking contrast, our colleagues have switched over from being impeachment investigators for constitutional high crimes and misdemeanors, which is how this whole thing started, to being amateur memory specialists giving us their drive-by diagnoses of the President of the United States, | ||
| whose soaring oratory, powerful historical analysis, and devastating extemporaneous repartee with even the most skilled ninja hecklers of the Freedom Caucus were on full display at the State of the Union Address. | ||
| The desperate quest to invent an issue is a distraction. | ||
| From the 91 federal and state federal charges that Donald Trump faces now, his staggering civil court losses in New York now totaling more than a half a billion. | ||
| And his full-blown embrace and romance with authoritarian dictators and communist tyrants all over the world, from Viktor Orban in Hungary to Vladimir Putin in Russia, the former head of the KGB, to the communist dictator of North Korea. | ||
| My friends, this is a memory test. | ||
| But it's not a memory test for President Biden. | ||
| It's a memory test for all of America. | ||
| Do we remember fascism? | ||
| Do we remember Nazism? | ||
| Do we remember communism and totalitarianism? | ||
| Have we completely forgotten the sacrifices of our parents and grandparents and prior generations? | ||
| While we play pin the tail on the donkey in this wild goose chase, all of these silly games, Donald Trump... | ||
| He entertains authoritarian hustler Viktor Orban at Mar-a-Lago for the weekend, and Orban comes out to declare that if we indeed sleepwalk into another Trump presidency, Trump will, quote, not give a single penny to Ukraine. | ||
| That's what all of this is about. | ||
| It's about trying to pull the wool over the eyes of America because the tyrants and dictators of the world are on the march today. | ||
| So who wins with this ludicrous, embarrassing spectacle? | ||
| Orban wins. | ||
| Putin wins. | ||
| Xi wins. | ||
| The tyrants of the world win. | ||
| They have one more reason to celebrate Donald Trump and his cult followers, who've completely lost their way. | ||
| They're looking for high crimes and misdemeanors. | ||
| Now they appoint themselves amateur memory specialists, and that's what they pounce on the president of the United States about. | ||
| America faces a choice between democracy and tyranny. | ||
| And the president laid it out at Valley Forge, and he laid it out in the State of the Union. | ||
| Will America stand on the side of people struggling against fascist aggression? | ||
| Will we stand with the people of Ukraine against Vladimir Putin, whose filthy war has meant the kidnapping of thousands of Ukrainian children, the murder, the slaughter of thousands of Ukrainian civilians, and the attack on an independent, sovereign democracy? | ||
| But we're not working on that today. | ||
| We're not standing up for democracy and human rights and international law around the world. | ||
| No, we're trying to play memory detectives to parse the language of a president who the whole world got to see at the State of the Union address, directly address the real questions of our time. | ||
| And it is democracy versus dictatorship. | ||
| And all of the autocrats and the theocrats... | ||
| All of the kleptocrats of the world are together in league against American democracy, and we have to stand up for American democracy against these stupid games. | ||
| I yield back, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| The gentleman yields back. | ||
| The chairman of the Oversight Committee, Mr. Comer, is recognized for five minutes. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| During the Oversight Committee interviews, we've identified a number of White House employees who were involved in the mishandling of classified documents under the leadership of President Biden. | ||
| Special Counselor Hurd, can you please tell us approximately how many current and former White House employees you interviewed related to your investigation? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Chairman Comer, I don't have that figure immediately at hand. | |
| Of course, it was a subset of the 173 interviews that we conducted during our investigation. | ||
| Your report indicates that one of those former White House employees who you interviewed was Dana Remus. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We did interview Ms. Remus. | |
| Ms. Remus was President Biden's former White House counsel, correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
She was President Obama's former White House counsel. | |
| I'm sorry, President Obama's White House counsel. | ||
| Related to Ms. Remus, in your report on page 257, you wrote, in May 2022, White House counsel Dana Remus undertook an effort to retrieve Mr. Biden's files from the Penn Biden Center. | ||
| Remus described the original purpose of that effort as gathering materials to prepare for potential congressional inquiries about the Biden family's activities during the period of 2017 to 2019. | ||
| Now, it seems odd to me that Dana Remus and Joe Biden's personal lawyers were obtaining documents related to potential congressional inquiries about the Biden family activities when Joe Biden has publicly claimed he had no involvement with his family's business dealings. | ||
| Can you provide more information about why Dana Remus, a government employee, was retrieving Joe Biden's documents from the Penn Biden Center? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Chairman, I'm able to tell you and clarify information that appears in the report about relevant, significant sources of information, but I am not in a position to be able to go beyond that. | |
| When you interviewed President Biden, did you ask him what documents he possessed at Penn Biden Center that could be related to a potential congressional inquiry about his family's activities? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We asked President Biden a wealth of questions about all. | |
| Of the different sets of classified materials that were recovered during the course of our investigation. | ||
| Did anything pertain specifically to our congressional inquiry of President Biden that you recall? | ||
|
unidentified
|
If there are more specific aspects of it that you have in mind, Chairman, that would be helpful to me. | |
| Interest pertaining to his family's influence peddling activities? | ||
|
unidentified
|
If it's helpful, Chairman, Appendix A does list in table chart form a brief description of all of the marked classified data. | |
| We intend to interview Ms. Remus, and the recording or transcript of your interview would be highly relevant to our future questioning of her. | ||
| Can you confirm that you did, in fact, record her in your interview? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It was our practice to record the interviews that we conducted, Chairman Gilmer. | |
| Additionally, in the course of the investigation, the Oversight Committee learned from a Penn Biden Center employee that Annie T. Tomasini, a White House employee, visited the Penn-Biden Center in 2021. | ||
| Did you interview Annie Tomasini in the course of your investigation? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Chairman, the report does not reflect that specific name, but what I can tell you is that the report does reflect that we interviewed the Director of Oval Office Operations, and one of the places that's reflected is footnote 973. | |
| The Oversight Committee interviewed Kathy Chung, a Department of Defense employee and former assistant to Vice President Biden, and learned that Ms. Chung visited the Biden-Penn Center in June 2022 after being contacted by White House counsel in May 2022. | ||
| This was months before classified documents were allegedly found in November 2022. | ||
| Did you interview Kathy Chung in the course of your investigation? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Chairman, I believe that the substance... | |
| Relating to the subject you're asking about appears on page 259 of the report. | ||
| And while the name Kathy Chung does not appear in the text of the report, there are references to interviews of an executive assistant, including a footnote 988. | ||
| The Oversight Committee also learned from its interviews with Penn Biden Center employees and Kathy Chung that Dana Remus, Anthony Bernal, and Ashley Williams, all at the time White House employees, then visited the Penn Biden Center on different occasions before the alleged discovery of classified materials. | ||
| In November 2022, did you interview these individuals during your investigation? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We interviewed many individuals, and I can assure you, Chairman, that it was a priority of ours to interview all the relevant sources of information about these documents, how they got there, who knew about them, and who accessed them. | |
| So, again, they were all recorded, is that correct? | ||
| So there would be recordings. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It was our practice to interview recordings, yes, sir. | |
| How many White House employees visited the Penn-Biden Center before classified materials were reportedly discovered there in November 2022? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't have any. | |
| According to the White House. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sir, I don't have an exact count. | |
| How many visits to the Penn-Biden Center were made by either White House employees or President Biden's personal attorneys before the official discovery of documents in November 2022? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't have that figure at hand, but that should be detailed in Chapter 14 of the report, sir. | |
| You'll bet. | ||
| The gentleman yields back. | ||
| The general lady from Texas is recognized for five minutes. | ||
| Mr. Hur, anytime you need a break, if you need a break, let us know, because we're going to go a while, as you well know. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, sir. | |
| Ms. Jackson Lee is recognized. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. Hur, good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| The Republicans here asked for a lot of transcripts, but Chair Jordan has yet to release 90-plus transcripts from our interviews with those if they are to be released to the American people is the question. | ||
| My question to you is, you decided, based on the facts, not to prosecute or indict or bring forward Charges against the President of the United States, the sitting President, Joseph Biden. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| That was my judgment. | ||
| This investigation was independent and thorough. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| We have heard from our Republican colleagues, who are grappling at straws, allegations that President Biden was treated lightly in this investigation. | ||
| But just a plain reading of this report completely refutes that argument. | ||
| There was no two-tiered system of justice. | ||
| There was only a lack of evidence against President Biden. | ||
| Mr. Herr, your office and the FBI undertook an extensive investigation into Mr. Biden's handling of classified information and of the classified documents the FBI sees, correct? | ||
| Correct. | ||
| In your investigation, you conducted 173 interviews of 147 witnesses, correct? | ||
| That is correct. | ||
| And President Biden himself was one of those witnesses, correct? | ||
| Correct. | ||
| For at least five hours or more? | ||
| Correct. | ||
| And President Biden engaged in this interview voluntarily? | ||
| Correct. | ||
| And the interview with President Biden lasted more than five hours, I've said that, that's correct? | ||
| Correct. | ||
| And the interview, and it occurred the day, which all should know, after the horrific attack, October 7th, 2023, a mass attack in Israel. | ||
| According to a letter from the White House Counsel, is that correct? | ||
| The interview spans two days, October 8th and October 9th. | ||
| With the president having to be in and out to deal with an international crisis. | ||
| And after the interview, he provided handwritten answers to additional questions, correct? | ||
| Congresswoman, I don't recall the president being in and out during our interview to handle the internet. | ||
| Let me go on. | ||
| And President Biden allowed investigators... | ||
| To search his private houses. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| He did consent to the search of his residence. | ||
| And your investigation collected seven million documents for review in your investigation. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| Correct. | ||
| And this included emails, text messages, photographs, videos, toll records, and other materials from both classified and unclassified sources. | ||
| Correct. | ||
| And you referred or reviewed President Biden's handwritten notes as well, correct? | ||
| Correct. | ||
| And you coordinated with the multiple government agencies to organize and complete your investigation, correct? | ||
| We consulted with numerous agencies to conduct classification reviews of evidence that was seized during the investigation. | ||
| And that included working with national security experts in the intelligence community to carefully analyze each classified document that was obtained. | ||
| With respect to marked classified documents, that's correct. | ||
| We submitted excerpts from the former vice president's notebooks for classification review. | ||
| And if agencies reviewed classified material and gave it different levels of classification, you classified it as a higher level for the purposes of your investigation, to be thorough, correct? | ||
| That is reflected in appendices A and B. Thank you. | ||
| The FBI requested classification review from each identified agency accordingly for documents where multiple agencies had equities. | ||
| The Special Counsel's Office used the highest level of classification identified by an agency as the current classification of the document. | ||
| Let me go on. | ||
| Attorney General Garland appointed you as Special Counsel over the matter on January 12, 2023, correct? | ||
| Correct. | ||
| He authorized you to investigate Mr. Biden's possession of the classified documents, including possible unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or other records. | ||
| Correct. | ||
| at the Penn Center, Penn Biden Center, President Biden's home, Delaware, as well as any matters that rose from the initial investigation may arise directly from the special counsel. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| I believe that accurately reflects the language of the appointment order. | ||
| So you operated an independent investigation for about a year, which you just stated that you had adequate resources to complete, in which you conducted 173 interviews, included with President Biden himself. | ||
| You reviewed 7 million documents, including President Biden's personal records, and searched his home thoroughly. | ||
| And in this thorough, lengthy investigation, you did not uncover enough evidence to recommend prosecution against the president. | ||
| That's my judgment. | ||
| And if you had found enough evidence to warrant prosecution, did you feel free? | ||
| I was aware of the Office of Legal Counsel policy right now. | ||
| Prohibiting sitting presidents from being charged with federal crimes. | ||
| But apart from that, what I can tell you, Congresswoman, is that the investigative steps that we took were my own, the judgment was my own, and the words in the report are my own. | ||
| And you would have done so... | ||
| Regular order, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| The time of the gentlelady has expired. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. Chairman, I'd like to put into the record JustSecurity.org, the real Robert Hewitt report, unanimous consent. | |
| Without objection. | ||
| Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Florida. | ||
| Five minutes. | ||
| February 8th, the White House. | ||
| Question. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Here we go, baby. | |
| Why did you share classified information with your ghostwriter? | ||
| The president. | ||
| I did not share classified information. | ||
| I did not share it. | ||
| I guarantee I did not. | ||
| That's not true, is it, Mr. Hurd? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That is inconsistent with the findings based on the evidence in my report. | |
| Yeah, so it's a lie. | ||
| It's just what regular people would say, right? | ||
| Yeah, all right. | ||
| So the next one. | ||
| And all the stuff that was in my home. | ||
| Was in filing cabinets that were either locked or able to be locked. | ||
| That wasn't true either, was it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That was inconsistent with the findings of our investigation. | |
| Another lie, people might say, right? | ||
| Because what you put in your report was, among the places Mr. Biden's lawyers found classified documents in the garage was a damaged open box. | ||
| So here's what I'm understanding, right? | ||
| As Mr. Armstrong laid out, you find in your report that the elements of a federal criminal violation are met. | ||
| But then you apply this senile cooperator theory that because Joe Biden cooperated and the elevator doesn't go to the top floor, you don't think you get a conviction. | ||
| And I actually think you get to the right answer in that. | ||
| I don't think Biden should have been charged. | ||
| I don't think Trump should have been charged. | ||
| But under the senile cooperator theory, isn't it frustrating that Biden continues to go out and lie about the basic facts of the report that lay out a federal criminal violation? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Congressman, I need to disagree with at least one thing that you said, which is that I found that all of the elements were met. | |
| One of the elements of the relevant mishandling statute is the intent element, and what my report reflects is my judgment that, based on the evidence, I would not be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury that that intent element had been met. | ||
| Right, but the reason you have that doubt... | ||
| Is the senile cooperator theory, the fact that Joe Biden is so inept in responding that you can't prove the intent, which, again, I don't quibble with that conclusion, but it's frustrating to be like, oh, well, this guy's not getting treated the same way as Trump because the elevator's not going to the top floor, so we can't prove intent, while at the same time Biden goes out there at the White House and says, well, you know... | ||
| He just blatantly lies. | ||
| And what I'm trying to figure out is whether or not Biden's lying because he's still so senile, he hasn't read your report, or whether it's a little craftier and a little more devious and perhaps a little more intentional than we might otherwise think. | ||
| So I also want to go to this Biden-Penn Center. | ||
| Did it give concern to you that the Biden-Penn Center, where all this classified stuff was being mishandled, was being floated by foreign governments? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Congressman, we were concerned with getting to the bottom of all of the classified documents that were recovered during the course of our... | |
| Yeah, but what bothers me is that the money that was paying for the place where the documents were being inappropriately held, it was the Chinese and it was other foreign countries. | ||
| Did that play into your analysis? | ||
| Did you look into the billion dollars in foreign funding sources at the Biden Center at UPenn, for example? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Congressman, we conducted a thorough, impartial, and fair investigation, and we were very, very concerned with getting to the bottom of all the relevant questions relating to the recovered documents. | |
| Sir, did you look into the fact that the Chinese were floating the place where this guy was keeping the documents unsecure? | ||
| Yes or no? | ||
| Nice. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Congressman, to the extent that we identified evidence that was relevant and significant to our investigation, we put it in our report. | |
| Okay, it seemed relevant to me. | ||
| Maybe not to you. | ||
| Another thing that seemed relevant to me is this ghostwriter, right? | ||
| So the ghostwriter... | ||
| He purposely deletes this evidence that seems to show culpability of Biden's crimes, and you don't charge him. | ||
| Why did you not charge the ghostwriter with obstructing justice and deleting evidence? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, for a number of reasons that are laid out in the report, but in brief, Congressman, yes, when we interviewed the ghostwriter, he did tell us, and I'm trying to get the exact language. | |
| That one of the things on his mind, one of the things he was aware of, was that I had been appointed special counsel and was conducting an investigation. | ||
| So he didn't, just so everybody knows, the ghostwriter didn't delete the recordings just as a matter of happenstance. | ||
| Ghostwriter has recordings of Biden making admissions of crimes. | ||
| He then learns that you've been appointed. | ||
| He then deletes the information that is the evidence, and you don't charge him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That is reflected in the report, and one of the reasons... | |
| Like, what does somebody have to do to get charged with obstruction of justice by you? | ||
| If, like, deleting the evidence of crimes doesn't count, what would meet the standard? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Congressman, as we state in the relevant chapter of the report, one of the things that Mr. Zwanitzer did not delete was transcripts of the recordings that he had created that included inculpatory evidence relating to Mr. Block. | |
| Oh, so if you destroy some evidence but not other evidence? | ||
| That somehow absolves you of the evidence you destroy? | ||
| Like, here's what I see. | ||
| Zwaniger should have been charged. | ||
| Wasn't. | ||
| Biden and Trump should have been treated equally. | ||
| They weren't. | ||
| And that is the double standard that I think a lot of Americans are concerned about. | ||
| I see my time's expired. | ||
| I yield back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Bam! | |
| Boom! | ||
| The gentleman from Tennessee is recognized for five minutes. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Mr. Hurst, thank you for being here. | ||
| I'm a little confused about this hearing. | ||
| Mr. Raskin laid out the big picture we should be concerned about. | ||
| But in the more limited picture, Director Mueller had an investigation. | ||
| He's our most famous recent special prosecutor. | ||
| And he found sufficient evidence to say there was a connection between Russia and the Trump campaign. | ||
| And it supported a criminal prosecution if he were not president. | ||
| You found there was no evidence to support a criminal prosecution. | ||
| And the story here is simple. | ||
| President Biden identified classified documents in his home and other places and told archives about them. | ||
| The Independent Department of Justice under Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed you, a former Trump political appointee, as special counsel to fully investigate these circumstances and authorized you to prosecute criminal misconduct. | ||
| You declined to prosecute because you found insufficient evidence of a crime. | ||
| Case closed. | ||
| It makes really a perfect case where you did your job, Mr. Garland did his job, and unlike Mr. Barr, he didn't interfere. | ||
| Didn't Mr. Garland ask you to change your report at all? | ||
|
unidentified
|
He did not, sir. | |
| Didn't redact a thing? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, sir. | |
| Like Mr. Barr did, he redacted everything and made the Mueller report look like 180 degrees different than what it was. | ||
| Mr. Garland did right, and you did right, and I commend each of you. | ||
| The Department of Justice is independent and allows the special counsels to investigate and prosecute the facts if it's supported. | ||
| Joe Biden's actions in handling classified materials is similar to most other former presidents and vice presidents. | ||
| The exception is Donald Trump. | ||
| So let's start with some yes or no questions. | ||
| from Mr. Garland or his staff to make any specific factual finding or legal conclusion? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Did you receive the resources necessary to carry out your duties? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Do you have any reason to believe that you were treated differently with regard to independence No. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Based on your experience as special counsel, do you have any reason to believe the attorney general is improperly directing, pressuring or interfering with Jack Smith or his work? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I do not have the basis to answer that question. | |
| But your declination, which we treat as thoughtful and apolitical, we should treat prosecutorial decisions by Jack Smith the same way, to the best of your knowledge. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Again, I really do not have the sufficient information with respect to Jack Smith's investigation to provide any comment on it. | |
| Let me ask you this. | ||
| If President Biden, in his testimony to you, Knew the exact date, January 20, whatever it was, 2009, when he became vice president, and the day when he left being vice president, January the 20th, I guess the first would have been January 20th again, 2009, and then January 20th in 2017. | ||
| He knew those dates exactly right. | ||
| And if he knew the exact date and the instant that Beau Biden died, would that have changed your decision not to bring a prosecution? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sir, I cannot engage in hypotheticals about what my decision would have been with different facts. | |
| What I did was to make a decision based on the facts and the circumstances that I was presented with, and we did identify during our investigation. | ||
| But it appears to me, and I think it would appear to the American public, that these minor discrepancies, as far as dates and after a long period of time, was not the basis. | ||
| It was not the basis for your decision to decline to prosecute. | ||
| was the fact that you didn't have the facts, that he acted differently than Trump, that he voluntarily provided the documents, that he complied with the Justice Department, that he didn't try to obstruct justice. | ||
| Those were the reasons you didn't prosecute him, not because he missed a few dates. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Congressman, my reasons for my declination decision are set out in my report, and I stand by the words in the report, sir. | ||
| Well, thank you. | ||
| And I think I'm encompassing them in what I'm saying to you, is that it was not anything to do with his memory why he wasn't chosen to be. | ||
| You chose not to indict him. | ||
| It was the difference in the facts in the case and how he dealt with it. | ||
| The fact is, Mr. Biden sat through five hours, and he did an admirable job, and he did an outstanding job in the State of the Union laying out the case for the future of America, for the middle class, for democracy around the world, for standing up to the Russians, not bending down to them. | ||
| That's what's important. | ||
| Not if you can be like on the $64,000 question, assuming it was legit, and answering every single question correctly. | ||
| That's not what you need to be president. | ||
| To be president, you need to have values. | ||
| You need to have an understanding of what values America has and needs to maintain to keep the world safe and peaceful. | ||
| That's dealing with Ukraine. | ||
| That's dealing with difficult people like Netanyahu in Israel to try to get something done that's correct. | ||
| That's what Joe Biden does. | ||
| And understanding Social Security and Medicaid are important institutions that help seniors. | ||
| Not senile people. | ||
| I mean, I really object to that comment. | ||
| Nobody suggests he's senile, and that's disrespectful of senior people with any kind of memory disability. | ||
| Lots of seniors have memory disability, but they're not senile, and to do such was shameful. | ||
| Joe Biden is a competent, good president who knows American values. | ||
| Gentleman's time has expired. | ||
| Gentleman yields back. | ||
| Gentleman from California is recognized for five minutes. | ||
| Thanks, Chairman. | ||
| To her, I'd like to start off by thanking you for your hard work and a comprehensive report. | ||
| I'm going to try not to provide testimony, as some people on both sides are, or provide conclusions, but I do have some questions that lead me to ask you for conclusions. | ||
| One question is, were there notes of the President of the United States that dated back to when he was a senator? | ||
| That contain classified information. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Among the documents that were recovered during our investigation were marked classified documents that dated back to when Mr. Biden was a senator. | |
| When he was in his 30s, 40s, 50s. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I believe that's correct. | |
| And were there documents from the time that he was vice president? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Okay. | ||
| So there's been a lot to do about, you know, senility, non-senility. | ||
| Poor memory and so on. | ||
| But let's just go through something that you deal with as a prosecutor every day. | ||
| You first start off with a set of initial evidence that indicates there may have been a crime. | ||
| Is that right? | ||
| By the time it gets to you, usually you have some evidence that there may have been a crime. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think that is fair, yes. | |
| Okay. | ||
| And in this case, at some point during this investigation, Where the elements of the crime, including willfulness, were put before you and you reached a personal conclusion that either there was likely guilt or not. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| Not provable, not in front of a jury, just personal, because you have to make that decision as part of the case, correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Correct. | |
| And I would say I approach the task as I have been trained to as a prosecutor, which is on an iterative basis. | ||
| The investigation is always uncovering new evidence that you incorporate. | ||
| So both before, during, and at the end, did you reach a conclusion, notwithstanding his current mental state of being an elderly man with a poor memory and so on, that he did in fact deliberately take... | ||
| documents and held them from back when he was a senator that, and we're talking about your personal, not that you could prove it, but personally, did you see a pattern that goes all the way back to, Congressman, I viewed my task as a prosecutor in this matter to determine what I believed the evidence. | ||
| No, I appreciate that, and I'm not trying to take away from your conclusion. | ||
| Some others are... | ||
| Debating the conclusion. | ||
| I'm not debating the conclusion. | ||
| I just want to go through one element that I think is important. | ||
| Look, you've prosecuted people in the past and failed to get a conviction. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Correct. | |
| Okay, you're not a 1,000 perfect batting average. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I can't say that. | |
| So you went into cases thinking that you would succeed and you didn't. | ||
| One might say you probably declined to prosecute ones that you might have either gotten a conviction or gotten a plea on. | ||
| Would you say that's fair to say over your long career? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think that's fair because I take the rules that set forth. | |
| However, I'm going to presume that you would never prosecute someone you thought was outright innocent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Correct. | |
| In this case, did you reach conclusion that this man was outright innocent? | ||
| percent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That conclusion is not reflected in my report, sir. | |
| Right. | ||
| So you did not reach that conclusion or it would have been in your report. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I viewed my task of explaining my decision to the Attorney General as being, based on my judgment and my assessment of the evidence, would a conviction at trial be the probable outcome? | |
| And I just want to make sure the record is complete in that because I think it's extremely important. | ||
| You did not reach an idea that he had committed no wrong. | ||
| You reached a conclusion that you would not prevail at trial and therefore did not take it forward. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Correct, Congressman. | |
| Okay. | ||
| I just want to go through one or two little housekeeping almost. | ||
| The documents that the president, then vice president, took, which included his own notes. | ||
| To your knowledge, aren't those covered by the Freedom of Information Act? | ||
| Potentially. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I honestly do not know, Congressman. | |
| Aren't they covered by the Presidential Records Act, as every note and every text of the President, the Vice President, and members of the Cabinet are covered? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think different folks would have different views on whether they're covered by the PRA, Congressman. | |
| But isn't it true that he left office leaving no copies of that behind, and that alone was inconsistent with an open and transparent individual, correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm not aware of copies of those materials being left behind in Congress. | |
| Okay, I want to thank you, and Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for the extra few seconds. | ||
| I yield back. | ||
| The gentleman yields back. | ||
| The gentleman from Georgia is recognized. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Here we go! | ||
| Guam tips over! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Guam! | |
| Guam is tipping! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Correct? | |
| Correct. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| Then you later joined the Daddy Bush Department of Justice as a special assistant to known Federalist Society member and now FBI Director Christopher Wray. | ||
| Isn't that correct? | ||
| I did spend some time working for former Assistant Attorney General Christopher Wray. | ||
| And you later joined the Trump Justice Department as the Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General, Another known Federalist Society member, Rod Rosenstein. | ||
| Isn't that correct? | ||
| I served as Mr. Rosenstein's principal deputy. | ||
| And then, Donald Trump appointed you to serve as U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| President Trump nominated me to serve in that position, and I was unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate. | ||
| That's correct. | ||
| And thereafter, Attorney General Merrick Garland... | ||
| Appointed you to serve as special counsel for the United States Department of Justice to conduct a full and thorough investigation of certain matters to determine whether or not Joseph Biden should be charged with unlawfully removing and retaining classified documents. | ||
| Isn't that correct? | ||
| Correct. | ||
| And nowhere in that order does Attorney General Garland authorize you to conduct an investigation and issue a report on whether President Biden is mentally fit. | ||
| To serve as president. | ||
| Isn't that correct? | ||
| That does not appear in the appointment order. | ||
| And pursuant to your appointment to conclude your investigation, you issued a report that was published by Attorney General Garland, correct? | ||
| He made it available to Congress, sir. | ||
| And your report concluded that after a full and thorough investigation, the evidence was insufficient to establish that President Biden had willfully retained classified documents. | ||
| Isn't that correct? | ||
| My judgment was that based on the state of the evidence, a conviction at trial was not the probable outcome. | ||
| And you determined that there was no evidence of willful retention because each time classified documents were discovered to be in the president's possession, the White House notified the National Archives right away, the Biden legal team. | ||
| And the White House fully cooperated with the National Archives during the investigation. | ||
| Once the DOJ opened the investigation, President Biden and his personal counsel fully cooperated. | ||
| Isn't that correct? | ||
| We did identify some evidence of willful retention and disclosure, but we also noted... | ||
| The point is, though, that the President cooperated fully with you. | ||
| And didn't President... | ||
| I mean... | ||
| They never tried to hide any documents from you, did they? | ||
| The report does note steps of cooperation taken by the president. | ||
| Thank you, sir. | ||
| And last but not least, unlike in the Trump classified documents case, President Biden's counsel never falsely certified that there was no classified documents in the president's possession, correct? | ||
| The report does include some comparisons and contrasts between the facts alleged in the Trump case and the Biden case. | ||
| Despite clearing President Biden from being prosecuted, you used your report to trash and smear President Biden because he said in response to questions over a five-hour interview that he didn't recall how he got the documents. | ||
| And you knew that that would play into the Republicans' narrative that the president is unfit for office because he's senile. | ||
| And the American people saw... | ||
| During the State of the Union address, that that was not true. | ||
| But yet, that's what you tried to offer to them, and that's why they are having you here today, so that they can expand upon that narrative. | ||
| And you knew that that's what was going to happen, didn't you? | ||
| Congressman, I reject the suggestions that you have just made. | ||
| That is not what happened. | ||
| Let me move on, then. | ||
| You are a member. | ||
| You are a member of the Federalist Society, are you not? | ||
| And fair. | ||
| Are you a member of the Federalist Society? | ||
| I am not a member of the Federalist Society. | ||
| But you are a Republican, though, aren't you? | ||
| I am a registered Republican. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| And you're doing everything you can do to get President Trump re-elected so that you can get appointed as a federal judge or perhaps to another position in the Department of Justice. | ||
| Oh, you piece of trash. | ||
| Oh, you scumbag. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I have no such aspirations, I can assure you, and I can tell you. | |
| That partisan politics had no place whatsoever in my work. | ||
| It had no place in the investigative steps that I took. | ||
| It had no place in the decision that I made, and it had no place in a single word of my report. | ||
| Thank you, sir. | ||
| The gentleman's time has expired. | ||
| The gentleman from New Jersey is recognized for five minutes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What a piece of garbage. | |
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Mr. Harris, thank you for being here. | ||
| You know, I think for the folks that may be watching this at home, they might be a little bit confused, and I'm trying to organize this in my mind as well. | ||
| The way the president is portrayed in your report and just how we feel about him. | ||
| Was he a well-meaning, forgetful man, as you said? | ||
| Or was he a man that was focused on history? | ||
| Was he a man that maintained and retained these top-secret documents that should have been not in his home? | ||
| And was he a man that wanted to prove he was worthy to be president and that his vision of Afghanistan was better than even President Barack Obama's and that his focus on history was most important to him? | ||
| Do you know which it is? | ||
| Congressman, to the extent you're quoting language from my report, I stand by the words in my report. | ||
| So you stand by that he was, and let me quote you exactly, quote, a well-meaning but forgetful old man. | ||
| I don't think those exact words appear in the report, Congressman, but to the extent that I use words similar to that effect in my assessment of how a jury would perceive Mr. Biden and the evidence relating to him, including his testimony, I do stand by that assessment. | ||
| So is it accurate to say that in your interview, President Biden retained and disclosed classified materials as a means to bolster his image as a presidential figure? | ||
| And I'm going to ask you for yes or no's here because our time is so limited. | ||
| I believe words to that effect are in my report, Congressman. | ||
| So the answer is yes. | ||
| Would you agree that President Biden's intent to showcase his legacy provides a motive for his actions concerning classified materials? | ||
| Yes or no? | ||
| It is one of the motives addressed in the report. | ||
| Yep, to showcase his legacy. | ||
| Is it accurate to quote your report that classified documents were found in... | ||
| "Badly damaged boxes in his garage near a collapsed dog crate, a dog bed, a Zappos box, and an empty bucket." Is that correct? | ||
| Those words do appear in the report. | ||
| So that's correct. | ||
| The answer is yes. | ||
| Are these secure locations to store classified documents? | ||
| They are not. | ||
| Okay, so we got a former vice president who... | ||
| Is established to have willfully, purposefully retained classified documents in order to highlight his political stature and show his stature as a presidential figure. | ||
| We have a former vice president who stored classified documents in very unsecured places. | ||
| We have a former vice president who will not suffer any consequences for all of these actions. | ||
| All because we say, well, he's a well-meaning, forgetful old man. | ||
| You know, if you were kind of a well-meaning, forgetful old man that was driving a car and you forgot what you were doing a little bit and you hit somebody and killed him, I believe you'd be responsible. | ||
| The law must apply, you know this, to everyone. | ||
| The standard behind the decision not to prosecute Joe Biden, especially in light of Special Counsel Jack Smith's decision to prosecute President Trump for similar conduct. | ||
| Gives the real appearance of two standards. | ||
| Just, again, so much part of this Department of Justice. | ||
| Justice for thee, but not for me. | ||
| Special Counsel Herr, has any former president or vice president, besides President Trump, ever been criminally charged for knowingly retaining classified information after they left office? | ||
| Yes or no? | ||
| No. | ||
| Would you concur that Special Counsel Smith's decision to charge a former president for retaining and disclosing classified information was an extraordinary, unusual, and unprecedented decision? | ||
| I will not comment on that matter. | ||
| Well, I'm going to comment. | ||
| The answer is yes. | ||
| Special Counsel Heard, these two reports are the culmination, in my mind, of the Department of Justice's two standards. | ||
| Two standards and an example again. | ||
| Of the Justice Department being weaponized against conservatives. | ||
| You know, there's another piece to this, too. | ||
| I have just a few seconds. | ||
| We know that when his ghostwriter was speaking to him, he also did recordings. | ||
| And when he did those recordings, it was clear. | ||
| In fact, I'll try to quote this here. | ||
| It was a month in 2017, a month after Biden left as VP. | ||
| He was aware of top secret classified materials that were, quote, downstairs. | ||
| Is that true? | ||
| That is reflected in an audio recording, yes. | ||
| It's reflected in an audio recording, you know. | ||
| So sometimes he may be sleepy. | ||
| Sometimes he may be forgetful. | ||
| Sometimes he may be cognitively impaired. | ||
| There's no doubt about that. | ||
| But man, when it came to his personal legacy, the way he wanted to be remembered, to be sure that he was a big deal in plain English in the future, he was willingly and knowingly breaking the law. | ||
| And it's unfortunate. | ||
| That we have a Department of Justice that will treat one person one way and somebody else a different way. | ||
| It's a sad day for America. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Hurd. | ||
| I yield back. | ||
| The gentleman yields back. | ||
| The gentleman from California is right now. | ||
| Mr. Hurd, I want to ask you about some of the differences between the facts involving President Biden and President Trump. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| Adam Schiff. | ||
| I want to provide your opening statement in which you said that you did not disparage the President's report. | ||
| Pencil neck! | ||
| But, of course, you did disparage the president. | ||
| Watermelon! | ||
| You disparaged him in terms you had to know would have a maximal political impact. | ||
| You understood your report would be public, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I understood, based on comments that the attorney general had made, that he had committed to make as much of my report public as consistent with legal policy and legal requirements. | |
| And you could have chosen just to comment on the president's particular recall vis-a-vis a document or a set of documents. | ||
| But you decided to go further and make a generalized statement about his memory, didn't you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Congressman, I could have written my report, theoretically, in a way that omitted references to the president's memory, but that would have been an incomplete and improper report. | |
| That wasn't my question. | ||
| You could have written your report with comments about his specific recollection as to documents or a set of documents. | ||
| But you chose a general pejorative reference to the president. | ||
| You understood when you made that decision, didn't you, Mr. Herr, that you would ignite a political firestorm with that language, didn't you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Congressman, politics played no part whatsoever in my investigative steps. | |
| You understood nevertheless, didn't you, Mr. Herr? | ||
| Mr. Herr, you cannot tell me you're so naive as to think. | ||
| Your words would not have created a political firestorm. | ||
| You understood that, didn't you? | ||
| When you wrote those words, when you decided to include those words, when you decided to go beyond specific references to documents, you understood how they would be manipulated by my colleagues here on the GOP side of the aisle and by President Trump. | ||
| You understood that, did you not? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Congressman, what I understood is the regulations that govern my conduct as special counsel. | |
| And those regulations required me to write a confidential report for the Attorney General explaining my decision. | ||
| And that is what I did, Congressman. | ||
| I followed the rules. | ||
| You knew it would not be confidential, didn't you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sir, the regulations required me to write a confidential report explaining my decision to the Attorney General. | |
| Which you knew would be released. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It was up to the Attorney General to determine what portions of the report would be released consistent with DOJ policy and legal requirements. | |
| You understood it would be released. | ||
| You understood it would be released. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I understood from the Attorney General's public comments that he would make as much of my report public as he could consistent with legal requirements in DOJ policy. | |
| You also understand DOJ policy that you are to take care not to prejudice the interests of the subject of an investigation, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That is generally one of the interests that DOJ policy requires that prosecutors respect. | |
| And it was your obligation to follow that policy in this report, was it not? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It was also my obligation to write a confidential report for the Attorney General explaining completely my decision. | |
| What you did write was deeply prejudicial to the interests of the President. | ||
| You say it wasn't political, and yet you must have understood. | ||
| You must have understood the impact of your words. | ||
| You must have understood the impact of your decision to go beyond the specifics of a particular document, to go to the very general, to your own personal, prejudicial, subjective opinion of the president, one you knew would be amplified by his political opponent, one you knew that would influence a political campaign. | ||
| You had to understand that. | ||
| And you did it anyway. | ||
| And you did it anyway. | ||
| And let me just go to some of the differences here. | ||
| Between the President's conduct and Mr. Trump's. | ||
| In the superseding indictment, on page 3, it says that Mr. Trump suggested that his attorney falsely represent to the FBI and grand jury that he did not have documents called for by the grand jury subpoena. | ||
| You didn't find anything like that with respect to Mr. Biden, did you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Congressman, I do not have the Trump indictment in front of me, but I need to address something that you said in your prior question. | |
| What you were suggesting... | ||
| Is that I needed to provide a different version of my report that would be fit for public release. | ||
| That is nowhere in the rules. | ||
| I was to prepare a confidential report that was comprehensive and thorough. | ||
| What is in the rules, Mr. Herr, what is in the rules is you don't gratuitously do things to prejudice the subject of an investigation when you're declining to prosecute. | ||
| You don't gratuitously add language that you'll know will be useful in a political campaign. | ||
| You were not born yesterday. | ||
| You understood exactly what you were doing. | ||
| It was a choice. | ||
| You certainly didn't have to include that language. | ||
| You could have said vis-a-vis the documents that were found at the university. | ||
| The president did not recall. | ||
| There is nothing more common. | ||
| You know this. | ||
| I know this. | ||
| There is nothing more common with a witness of any age when asked about events that are years old to say, I do not recall. | ||
| Indeed, they're instructed by their attorney to do that if they have any question about it. | ||
| You understood that. | ||
| You made a choice. | ||
| That was a political choice. | ||
| It was the wrong choice. | ||
| Mr. Chairman, I yield back. | ||
| Gentleman yields back. | ||
| Gentleman from Arizona. | ||
| Did Special Counsel wish to respond to that final question? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, Congressman. | |
| What you are suggesting is that I shape, sanitize, omit portions of my reasoning and explanation of the Attorney General for political reasons. | ||
| No, I suggest that you not shape your report for political reasons, which is what you did. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That did not happen, Congressman. | |
| That did not happen. | ||
| The gentleman yields back. | ||
| The gentleman from Arizona is recognized for five minutes. | ||
| Why is Adam Schiff allowed to ask questions? | ||
| Why has he not been taken off this committee? | ||
| Unbelievable. | ||
| The weakness of Republicans. | ||
| Adam Schiff is a liar of opinion and not necessarily the facts as you've reported them. | ||
| So I want to I want to go over the elements of the offense that seem big at least struck my cross is the way you put in here twice that the jury would not find not likely to find it. | ||
| Intentionality on the part of disclosure in particular. | ||
| So I want to talk about that for a second. | ||
| So if it's not willful, we might say an accident, something negligent, careless, that would not necessarily rise to willful or intentional or purposeful, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Those are different standards of intent under the law. | |
| Yes, sir. | ||
| So when President Biden misplaced 30 briefing documents in 2010 that had classified material, and they're not sure even if they ever got them all back, or when he was in the Hamptons at a party and he lost what they were calling code words, which is high-security information, that wasn't necessarily willful. | ||
| There was no indication that he purposefully did that. | ||
| Accidental, negligent. | ||
| You indicated, don't know if we even got all that information back. | ||
| We're assuming maybe we did. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That would not be willful, right? | |
| As reflected in the report, there were certain categories of documents where when we looked into them and investigated how they got to where they ended up or how they ended up being misplaced, we did not identify evidence of willfulness. | ||
| Yeah, and so if something's willful, you wouldn't say it's ignorant, it's not incompetent, it's not accidental. | ||
| We'd say something like it's willful, it's intentional, it's purposeful. | ||
| It indicates really a choice that you have made a deliberate, conscious decision to act in a certain way. | ||
| Is that fair? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That is fair, Congressman. | |
| And as I explained in the report, the standard, the willfulness standard basically involves, can be boiled down to the following things. | ||
| That you know that what you are doing is against the law when you do it. | ||
| Correct. | ||
| So let's take a look at it. | ||
| And this has been brought up before in February of 2017. | ||
| He's having the discussion with the ghostwriter. | ||
| He says, he's at the Virginia house at this point. | ||
| He says, I just found all the classified stuff downstairs. | ||
| So he knows he's got classified stuff. | ||
| Two months later, in April, he's at a different location, is my understanding. | ||
| I think he's now up in Delaware. | ||
| Let's look at 105 and 106 here. | ||
| He says, Biden reads from a different notebook entry. | ||
| He reads aloud from notes summarizing a range of issues. | ||
| We're talking about U.S. military views expressed there by the intelligence community, the DNI, CIA director. | ||
| And while he's reading those notes, he says, I can't read my own writing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do you have any idea what the heck I'm saying here? | |
| He asked the ghostwriter. | ||
| The ghostwriter says, well, something, blah, blah, blah. | ||
| And Biden says this. | ||
| Some of this may be classified, so be careful. | ||
| Some of this may be classified, so be careful. | ||
| Now, my immediate response was, okay, so he knows he's got classified docs. | ||
| He's looking at this. | ||
| He can't read it. | ||
| He's giving this to somebody he knows that has no security clearance. | ||
| So he says, hey, read this. | ||
| But be careful. | ||
| It might be classified. | ||
| And the guy says, okay. | ||
| Next thing he says, well, I don't know if it's classified or not. | ||
| I'm suggesting to you, and this is where you and I have a difference of opinion. | ||
| When you say something like, hey, I just, look, this may be classified. | ||
| Be careful. | ||
| That warning, that warning to be careful because it may be classified, that indicates guilty knowledge. | ||
| That indicates he might know something more than he otherwise would have. | ||
| And it indicates, then they go on and they read it. | ||
| As you point out here, he reads classified information. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And it's still classified today. | |
| That's on page 106. | ||
| So when you look at this, it's hard for me to say, well, he was ignorant. | ||
| He was incompetent. | ||
| He was accidental. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| He had guilty knowledge. | ||
| He knew and told the guy that he's going to expose that classified material to, hey, be careful. | ||
| Be careful. | ||
| It may be classified. | ||
| That indicates something a little bit more than mere knowledge. | ||
| Indicates that he has some intent there. | ||
| Because the next thing he should have said is, hey, I don't know if it's classified. | ||
| But we're going to skip over this until that's resolved. | ||
| He didn't do that. | ||
| What he said is, read it anyway. | ||
| Yield back. | ||
| Gentleman yields back. | ||
| The gentleman from California is recognized for five minutes. | ||
| Mr. Herr, I was moved by your parents' immigrant story and how that has shaped you. | ||
| Eric Swalwell? | ||
| This story is a story that so many of us know through our constituents. | ||
| Oh my God. | ||
| It's a story of America. | ||
| It's a story that... | ||
| The guy who appointed you would end if he was in charge again. | ||
| It's a story that most of the folks on the other side of the aisle keep to block every day in this room, but it's a story that's persuasive. | ||
| You want your report to be received with credibility, is that right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
My goal was to provide a thorough explanation of my decision to the Attorney General as I was required to do. | |
| And as I said in my opening statement, I felt that I needed to show my work. | ||
| And you want to be received as credible, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That would be helpful and laudable, yes. | |
| Well, a lot has changed since 2018 for the person who appointed you, former President Trump. | ||
| Since you were appointed, he was impeached for leveraging 350 million U.S. taxpayer dollars over Ukraine to get dirt on President Biden. | ||
| He was then impeached a second time for inciting an insurrection. | ||
| He was charged for possessing classified documents and obstructing justice. | ||
| He was charged for paying for the silence of a porn star. | ||
| You slept with a Chinese spy! | ||
| ...for his role in January 6th. | ||
| He owes $400 million to the state of New York for defrauding the state through his taxes. | ||
| And he has been judged a rapist. | ||
| You want to be perceived, understandably, as credible. | ||
| And so I want to first see if you will pledge to not accept an appointment from Donald Trump if he is elected again as president. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Congressman, I'm not here to testify today about what will happen in the future. | |
| I'm here to talk about the report and the work that went into it. | ||
| But you don't want to be associated with that guy again, do you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Congressman, I'm not here to offer any opinions about what may or may not happen in the future. | |
| I'm here to talk about the work that went into the report, which I stand by. | ||
| There were no limits on you as to what you could charge President Biden by the Attorney General. | ||
| Is that right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The decisions that I made that are reflected in the report are my own. | |
| And you did not bring any charges. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Correct. | |
| There were no limits on John Durham and his investigation of the prior administration when he was special counsel. | ||
| Is that right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't believe I have the information required to answer the question about the Durham investigation. | |
| Well, he sat in the same chair that you're sitting in. | ||
| He told us that he also investigated President Biden and President Obama and did not bring any charges. | ||
| President Biden sat for an interview with you over two days for approximately 10 hours. | ||
| Is that right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
A little over five hours, Congressman. | |
| Over two days? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Correct. | |
| You know, that's in sharp contrast to a guy who did not sit for an interview when the Mueller investigation took place. | ||
| That was Donald Trump. | ||
| I want to turn you to the transcript. | ||
| Day one, page 47. You said to President Biden, you have appeared to have a photographic understanding and recall of the House. | ||
| Did you say that to President Biden? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Those words do appear on page 47 of the transcript. | ||
| Photographic is what you said. | ||
| Is that right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That word does appear on page 47 of the transcript. | |
| Never appeared in your report, though. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| The word photographic? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That does not appear in my report. | |
| I now want to show you and play a video of what is absolutely not photographic. | ||
|
unidentified
|
In the failing New York Times by an anonymous, really an anonymous, gutless coward. | |
| We are a nation that just recently heard that Saudi Arabia and Russia will raise the I hope they now go and take a look at the oranges, the oranges of the investigation. | ||
| And I watch our police and our firemen down on 7-Eleven, down at the World Trade Center. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And we did with Obama. | |
| We won an election that everyone said couldn't be won. | ||
| This is the very definition of totalitarianism. | ||
| And let me begin by wishing you a beautiful, like, look, you remember this? | ||
| Do you remember? | ||
| God bless. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The windmills are driving them crazy. | |
| They're driving the whales, I think, a little batty. | ||
| And I went to Puerto Rico, and I met with the president of the... | ||
| The gentleman yields back. | ||
| People are like, yeah! | ||
| That's the president! | ||
|
unidentified
|
The real president! | |
| I'm way down here at the end of the dais. | ||
| I think today the Justice Department released the transcripts of the interviews with President Biden. | ||
| Are you aware of that? | ||
| I understand that to be true, yes. | ||
| Did you have any involvement in the decision or the timing of the release of the transcripts? | ||
| No, Congressman. | ||
| Did you make any recommendation about the release of the transcripts for being done or not? | ||
| I did not. | ||
| That was above my pay grade. | ||
| I don't know why they've been released so close to this hearing, but it impacts our ability to evaluate your report and ask you questions about it. | ||
| But there's one point, just as an illustration, on 2-21 of your report, you're describing, I think, the Afghan pack or something like that, about in 2009, I think, is the information it came from. | ||
| And you say, as one reason not to prosecute Mr. Biden, in addition, Mr. Biden told us in his interview that he does not recognize the marking confidential as a classification marking. | ||
| To him... | ||
| The marking means the document should be held in confidence, but not necessarily that it is classified. | ||
| And footnote 866 is a reference, and it refers to the Biden 10-9-23 transcript at 24 and 25. Now, we have that now, but we haven't until this morning. | ||
| But I just want to read from that exchange. | ||
| This is on page 24, line 15. Mr. Crickbaum. | ||
| So this is a typewritten document. | ||
| It's got a confidential. | ||
| What appears to be a stamp at the top. | ||
| And the top of the document indicates it's from the American AM Embassy, Kabul. | ||
| It's dated, what appears to me, to be November 2009. | ||
| The only question I have for you about this, Mr. President, is the confidential marking. | ||
| Do you recognize that to be a classification marking? | ||
| President Biden. | ||
| No. | ||
| I mean, confidential doesn't want to get around. | ||
| It's not in a category. | ||
| I don't think of code word, top secret, that kind of thing, but I don't even know where it came from. | ||
| Mr. Crickbaum, are you familiar with confidential as a level of classified information? | ||
| President Biden, well, if I got a document that said confidential, it would mean that no one else could see it but me, and you give it, or the people working on this issue. | ||
| Mr. Crickbaum, and are you aware that among Certain categories of classified information, there is top secret, secret, and there's also a category of classified information called confidential. | ||
| Is that something that you are aware of or not? | ||
| President Biden, I, yes, I was aware of it. | ||
| I don't ever remember when I got any document that was confidential that was meant for me to read and or discuss with the people who sent me the memo so. | ||
| And then it trails off. | ||
| So as I read those answers, they're equivocal. | ||
| He at first says, do you recognize that to be a classification marking? | ||
| He said, no. | ||
| And then goes on to explain. | ||
| But then Mr. Crickbaum came back and he said, are you aware that among certain categories of classified information, there's also a category of classified information called confidential? | ||
| And he says, yes, I was aware of it. | ||
| So, Mr. Hurd, just in that one instance, there seems to be a discrepancy between the conclusion in the report or the summary of the evidence in the report and what the transcript says. | ||
| Can you offer any guidance to this committee why you would put that summary in your report as opposed to saying that he gave inconsistent answers? | ||
| Or, in fact, why didn't you nail down in the transcript which was the right answer? | ||
| He's given answers that says no, and then he says yes. | ||
| Why didn't you pursue it until you knew? | ||
| Congressman, the report reflects our best efforts to summarize and characterize the evidence in the investigation, including the investigation received from the president himself during our interview of him. | ||
| But as you point out, the transcripts of the president's interview over two days are now available to the committee for their inspection, and the members are able to draw their own conclusions based on the transcripts that are now available to them. | ||
| Well, and I appreciate your answer, and I certainly think you can come up with some details that someone can disagree on, and it has the quality, I know, of some cherry-picking because I've just found something, but we've only had a little bit of time to look. | ||
| I don't think it serves this process well for the Justice Department to dump these transcripts into the public right now. | ||
| If they're going to be released, they should have been released at a proper time. | ||
| And I think I'll leave it at that, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| I'll yield back. | ||
| Gentleman, yield. | ||
| Would the gentleman yield? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I will yield to the chairman. | |
| Just real quick, Mr. Hurd, someone earlier said something about changing the facts. | ||
| He said, I'm not going to change the facts, but let's keep the facts the same but change the subject. | ||
| You had the same facts, and the individual that you were investigating was 65 and had a good memory. | ||
| Do you reach the same conclusion? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Congressman, as I responded earlier to a question along these lines, I am not here to entertain hypotheticals about facts or circumstances that may be different. | |
| What I did was assess the evidence and the facts that I obtained in this investigation and make a judgment based on this set of evidence. | ||
| Fair enough. | ||
| The chair now recognizes General Lee from Washington for five minutes. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Special Counsel Herr, thank you for being here. | ||
| Thank you for your work. | ||
| In your investigation, you reviewed more than 7 million documents and conducted 173 interviews of 147 witnesses, including President Biden. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, Congresswoman. | |
| And your 15-month investigation cost several million dollars and resulted in a comprehensive 345-page report with several dozen pages of appendices. | ||
| Is it correct that, as it says in the first sentence of your executive summary, that your investigation concluded with an assessment that "no criminal charges are warranted in this matter"? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Correct. | |
| So this lengthy, expensive, and independent investigation resulted in a complete exoneration of President Joe Biden. | ||
| For every document you discussed in your report, you found insufficient evidence that the President violated any laws about possession or retention of classified materials. | ||
| The primary law that you analyzed for potential prosecution was part of the Espionage Act, 18 U.S.C. | ||
| 793-E, which criminalizes willful retention or disclosure of national defense information. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Congresswoman, that is one statute that we analyzed. | |
| I need to go back and make sure that I take note of the word that you used, exoneration. | ||
| Mr. Herr, I'm going to continue with my questions. | ||
| I'm going to continue with my questions. | ||
| I know that the term... | ||
|
unidentified
|
You exonerated him. | |
| I know that the term willful retention has a... | ||
| Mr. Herr, it's my time. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I know that the term willful retention has a particular legal meaning, and I want to make sure that that meaning is absolutely clear to the American people before we go any further. | ||
| As you wrote in your report, to prove as a matter of law that the president, quote, willfully retained any documents, you would need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt two elements. | ||
| First, that the president knowingly retained or disclosed national defense information, and second, that he knew that this conduct was unlawful. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's correct. | |
| And to be very, very... | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I'm sorry, Congressman, that it was national defense information. | |
| That's an important third element. | ||
| Okay, thank you. | ||
| To be very, very clear, you did not find sufficient evidence to prove either of those elements beyond a reasonable doubt to show that Mr. Biden willfully retained any of the classified national defense materials that were recovered during your investigation, correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
My conclusion was that the admissible evidence was not sufficient to make conviction at trial a probable outcome. | |
| Not sufficient. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Let me ask you about a few specific examples so the American people are clear. | ||
| One set of documents was discovered by investigators in the president's Delaware home. | ||
| His staff had assembled those documents into binders in 2014 to prepare him for an event with Charlie Rose. | ||
| Some of the documents in those binders were marked classified. | ||
| You reviewed all of the facts surrounding the classified documents in those binders and you You determined, and this is a quote from your report, these facts do not support a conclusion that Mr. Biden willfully retained the marked classified documents in these binders, correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That language does appear in the report. | |
| You also reviewed another set of classified documents from the president's home related to the Afghanistan troop surge in 2009, and you evaluated whether the president willfully retained such documents in his Delaware home or a home that he rented in Virginia in 2017. | ||
| In your report, you said that there was, quote, a shortage of evidence, end quote, for any wrongdoing, end quote, other innocent explanations for the documents that we cannot refute, end quote. | ||
| Are those quotes correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Congresswoman, if you have particular page sites for those quotations, I'd be happy to confirm their accuracy. | |
| Page 6. It's right up on the screen. | ||
|
unidentified
|
With respect to the two quotes that are on the screen, in addition to this shortage of evidence, there are other innocent explanations for documents we cannot refute, and we conclude the evidence is not sufficient to convict. | |
| I was just going to get to that, and you concluded that, quote, the evidence is not sufficient to convict, and we declined to recommend prosecution, end quote. | ||
| Those are your words in the report, correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Those words appear in the report. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| President Biden's counsel discovered a different set of documents at the Penn Biden Center and voluntarily turned them over to the FBI. | ||
| Those documents contain national security information, but you determined that you could not, in fact, prove that President Biden willfully retained those documents because, quote, the evidence suggests that the marked classified documents found at the Penn-Biden Center were sent and kept there by mistake. | ||
| Therefore, we decline any criminal charges related to those documents, end quote, correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The language we decline any criminal charges related to those documents does appear at page 311 of the report. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| You also reached a similar conclusion regarding the documents found in President Biden's Senate papers at the University of Delaware. | ||
| Quote, for these reasons, it is likely that the few classified documents found in Mr. Biden's Senate papers at the University of Delaware were there by mistake, correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That language does appear at page 325 of the report. | |
| So it seems to me that the crux of the report, the main story, is that you found insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that President Biden willfully retained any classified materials. | ||
| That is the story of this report. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| I just thank you, Special Counsel, for being here in these challenging times. | ||
| And I want to tell you a few things that is interesting for me. | ||
| You obviously could see that there is a motive, there is a legacy. | ||
| You obviously see that it was a willful retention of these documents. | ||
| But it's interesting for me that when you talk about sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory, it seems like every... | ||
| You know, an attorney would advise you to be sympathetic and be well-meaning. | ||
| And it seems like the whole FBI needs to do, based on my hearings here, I need to do check on amnesia because everyone doesn't recall. | ||
| So it seems to me that it might have been something way more. | ||
| In his recollection, there's a typical, I don't recall, because that's what everything is like that. | ||
| I've learned it here. | ||
| So is there ever something more than that, that just, I don't recall something, for you to actually decide? | ||
| Because it seems that this is the core of the whole investigation. | ||
| Why didn't you pursue further the charges? | ||
| Congresswoman, my judgment as to how a jury would likely perceive and receive and consider evidence relating to... | ||
| Relating to all the evidence that would be put in both by both the government and the defense at trial, it was based on a number of different sources from documents, including various recordings, some of them from the 2016-2017 timeframe, some from our interview with the President in October of 2023. | ||
| I think what you're asking about specifically is how the President presented himself during his interview in October of last year. | ||
| And of course, I did take into account not just the words from the cold record of the transcript, but the entire manner in living color in real time of how the president presented himself during his interview. | ||
| Hopefully he didn't smart you and all of us. | ||
| But before I yield, I just wanted to actually just comment on something, you know, Mr. Raskin mentioned about, you know, us not remembering communists. | ||
| I actually grew up under communists, and I have a very good recollection of what it is. | ||
| And unfortunately, Terrence, I on the rise, on the march, which he said, unfortunately, they've been emboldened by, you know, President Obama, now by President Biden, too. | ||
| And unfortunately, our government and Department of Justice is really now... | ||
| Resembles, you know, a tyrannical government. | ||
| It's sad for me to see that. | ||
| But I'm going in with a really double standard, what we have there. | ||
| But I'm going to yield to Chairman Jordan the rest of my time. | ||
| Thank you, gentlelady, for yielding. | ||
| Mr. Hurt, during your one-year investigation, did you have communications with the White House and the White House counsel in particular? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| I think you had, like, I got five letters that they... | ||
| And they communicated with you regarding your investigation. | ||
| Is that accurate? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We received a number of letters from White House counsel's office and as well as the president's personal counsel. | |
| Right. | ||
| They're either special counsel or personal counsel, I see, who signed the letters. | ||
| And did the White House get the report before the report was made public? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We did provide a draft of the report to the White House Counsel's Office and members of the President's personal counsel team for their review. | |
| I understand. | ||
| And did the White House then, once they got the report before it went public, did the White House try to weigh in with your investigation on elements of that report and, frankly, get the report changed? | ||
|
unidentified
|
They did request certain edits and changes to the draft report. | |
| Yeah, I see that in the February 5th letter. | ||
| Did they only correspond with you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm sorry, Congressman, are you asking if they corresponded with anyone else on my team? | |
| Once you gave the report to the White House, they saw changes. | ||
| I have one letter here that's addressed to you on February 5th, and they said we're pleased that after more of a year of investigating, you've determined, you know, they respond to the report. | ||
| And then they asked for you to change some of the things you had in your report, namely the fact that the president's memory was not very good. | ||
| Do you remember that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, sir. | |
| Okay, but I also have two other letters. | ||
| One on February 7th to Merrick Garland, where they raise the same concern, and then on February 12th, where they go to the DAG. | ||
| Bradley Weinsheimer. | ||
| You familiar with those? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I am familiar with those letters. | |
| Bradley Weinsheimer is an assistant or associate deputy attorney general. | ||
| Right, associate DAG, the A-DAG, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| And Merrick Garland, of course, is the attorney general. | ||
| So you're familiar with the fact that they went over your head? | ||
|
unidentified
|
They were certainly entitled to write whatever letters they wished to Mr. Weinzheimer and to the Attorney General. | |
| I just find that interesting. | ||
| The White House, they're communicating with you throughout this one-year investigation, and then the White House says, oh, we're going to go to the principal's office, and we're going to talk about Mr. Herr's report. | ||
| Do you find that interesting? | ||
|
unidentified
|
As I said, they were free to correspond with whomever in the federal government they wished to correspond with. | |
| I did engage in numerous communications with them during the course of the investigation, and as is reflected in the Special Counsel regulations, the Attorney General did provide oversight of my investigation. | ||
| I understand. | ||
| I thank the General Lady for yielding and yield back. | ||
| The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from California for five minutes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Chairman Jordan. | |
| I want to first say that the House Judiciary Committee is responsible for helping to enforce the rule of law. | ||
| Unfortunately, the actions of this Chairman What a lineup! | ||
| Now, Mr. Hur, thank you for being here today. | ||
| Thank you for sharing your compelling immigrant story that just goes to highlight how America is a nation of immigrants. | ||
| I'm going to ask you a series of questions, yes and no questions. | ||
| They're not trick questions. | ||
| They're simply designed to highlight what you already found in your report, which is that there are "material distinctions" between President Biden's case and Mr. Trump's case. | ||
| Here's my first question. | ||
| In your investigation, did you find that President Biden directed his lawyer to lie to We identified no such evidence. | ||
| No. | ||
| Did you find that President Biden directed his personal assistant to move boxes of documents to hide them from the FBI? | ||
| No. | ||
| Did you find that President Biden directed his personal assistant to delete security camera footage after the FBI asked for that footage? | ||
| No. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Did you find that President Biden showed a classified map related to an ongoing military operation to a campaign aide who did not have clearance? | |
| No. | ||
| Did you find that President Biden engaged in a conspiracy to obstruct justice? | ||
| No. | ||
| Did you find that President Biden engaged in a scheme to conceal? | ||
| No. | ||
| Each of the activities I just laid out described what Donald Trump did in his willful mishandling of classified information and his criminal efforts to deceive the FBI. | ||
| In contrast, President Biden handed over documents without delay and complied fully. | ||
| Mr. Hur, in your report, you write that, "According to indictment, Trump not only refused to return the documents for many months, but he also obstructed justice by enlisting others to destroy evidence and then to lie about it." You also say that if proven, these would be "serious aggravating facts." Do you still stand by your analysis? | ||
| I do. | ||
| I have a few more questions as well. | ||
| In your investigation, did you find that President Biden set up a shell company and covertly paid $130,000 in hush money to an adult porn star? | ||
| No. | ||
| Did you find that President Biden directed his lawyer to pay $150,000 in hush money to a former Playboy model? | ||
| No. | ||
|
unidentified
|
In your investigation, did you find that President Biden called the Georgia Secretary of State to demand that he quote, "fine 11,780 votes"? | |
| No. | ||
| Did you find that President Biden devised a scheme to organized a slate of fake electors to undermine a free and fair election? | ||
| No. | ||
| Did you find that leading up to January 6, 2021, President Biden urged his supporters to travel to D.C. and to storm the Capitol? | ||
| No. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Each of these activities I laid out described what Donald Trump did. | ||
| His efforts to bully election officials over the election and deceive the people. | ||
| That is why Donald Trump has been indicted in not just one, not just two, not just three, but four criminal cases. | ||
| I yield back. | ||
| The gentleman yields back. | ||
| The gentleman from Wisconsin is recognized for five minutes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just want to go do a little repetition, Mr. Herr, in regards to the chairman's questions from a few minutes ago. | |
| So is it correct on that February 5th letter that was sent? | ||
| Tom Tiffany's good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
to the president's poor member. | |
| Wasn't there a request by the White House to do that? | ||
| There was a request, yes. | ||
| And Mr. Chairman, I think the record should show that the gentleman from Maryland earlier said that that was not the case. | ||
| I think he said, nor did he seek to redact a single word of Herr's report. | ||
| Obviously, Mr. Herr is telling us differently here. | ||
| And didn't the White House then, Then go to the Attorney General himself and say that he would like to see changes to the references in regards to the President's memory? | ||
| The White House Counsel did send such a letter. | ||
| So if this President was 60 years old rather than 80 years old, would you prosecute him? | ||
| Congressman, as I've said before, I cannot engage in hypotheticals. | ||
| I address the facts and the evidence as I found them. | ||
| There was an 80-year-old grandma that came to Washington, D.C. a few years ago, did not commit a violent crime, committed a crime, but not commit a violent crime, and she was fully prosecuted. | ||
| Doesn't that seem like it's a dual system of justice where the president is above the law? | ||
| Congressman, I don't know the facts and the details of this other case that you're referencing with this other person. | ||
| You say that the president is unlikely to re-offend in the future. | ||
| I believe that was a quote that you put in the report. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| I believe that's in Chapter 13. How so? | ||
| How is he unlikely to re-offend in the future? | ||
| How do you come to that judgment? | ||
| As I say on page 254, any deterrent effect of prosecution would likely be slight. | ||
| We are not concerned with specific deterrents. | ||
| As we see, little risk he will re-offend. | ||
| Well, isn't it because he's now the president and he has almost unlimited authority to release documents? | ||
| Isn't that correct? | ||
| I mean, as a vice president, he didn't have that authority. | ||
| Now that he's president, isn't it easy to say that, that he's unlikely to reoffend because he's got almost unlimited authority to release these documents? | ||
| Well, that statement was based on that assessment of the likeliness of reoffending from... | ||
| This particular person, President Biden, is based on a number of factors, including the authority that he has now with respect to classified materials, as well as the experience that he's had going through a special counsel investigation. | ||
| Yeah, but looking back at 2011, there were multiple instances where he was informed by his staff and they ratcheted it up to where there was a formal process. | ||
| You're saying he's learned from that when he's proven that he hasn't? | ||
| I mean, that goes all the way back to 2011. | ||
| Congressman, what I'm saying in the report at page 254 is that... | ||
| He's a repeat offender, Mr. Herr, isn't he? | ||
| What I say... | ||
| Let me move on to... | ||
| I'll move on to something else here. | ||
| You said he had strong motivations to ignore the proper procedures for safeguarding classified information. | ||
| And he provided raw material to his ghostwriter that would be of interest to prospective readers and buyers of his book. | ||
| And I think you said something about... | ||
| He viewed himself as a historic figure, correct? | ||
| I believe those words do all appear in the report. | ||
| Yeah, and he was also doing this for business purposes, that there may be people that would want to buy his book? | ||
| Towards the end of his vice presidency, Mr. Biden had resolved to write a book and began work on it towards the end of his vice presidency. | ||
| You know, I think, Mr. Chairman, this is really consistent with the Biden family when you look at them in trying to enrich themselves. | ||
| I mean, you're familiar with the work that the Oversight Committee has done over the last year, right? | ||
| I have read some reports of it. | ||
| I mean, 20 phone calls that were made to his son that he denied in 2019, 20 shell companies that were created, over $20 million. | ||
| I mean, doesn't it appear there's a pattern here that where I come from, they almost call it money-grubbing? | ||
| Congressman, what I'm here to testify about today is the work that I conducted in this investigation and in this report. | ||
| So I want to thank you for the work that you did as far as you could. | ||
| But unfortunately, you are part of the Praetorian Guard that guards the swamp out here in Washington, D.C., protecting the elites. | ||
| And Joe Biden is part of that company of the elites. | ||
| And you see it in the things that the Department of Justice has not acted on, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| I mean, you look at the president's son, who does not have to answer for lying on his Form 4473. | ||
| In regards to throwing away a weapon, you see it where the Department of Justice fends off the IRS when the whistleblowers come with this information. | ||
| Now we see it once again, where a president believes he is above the law. | ||
| And there is no doubt that this president does believe he's above the law. | ||
| I yield back, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| The gentleman yields back. | ||
| The gentleman from California is recognized. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Mr. Herr, welcome. | ||
| I also concur and let me echo what's already been said by my colleagues that your personal story of being an immigrant, your family immigrants to this country, the way you contributed to the greatness of this country, shows why America is great. | ||
| A great immigrant story. | ||
| Thank you for being here, Senator. | ||
| First question to you is, you're a Republican? | ||
| I am, sir. | ||
| Does that stop you from a thorough and fair investigation? | ||
| I certainly hope not, and I know not. | ||
| This story is really proof of the old saying that the cover-up is worse than the crime. | ||
| President Trump and President Biden handled their classified materials differently, wouldn't you say? | ||
| My report includes an assessment of the alleged facts in the pending indictment of former President Trump and a comparison to the facts that we found in this case. | ||
| But clearly, the handling of these documents was night and day. | ||
| Correct. | ||
| Congressman, do you have a specific aspect of the handling of the documents that you have in mind? | ||
| Well, you know, President Trump intentionally took classified materials and obstructed justice to ensure that those materials wouldn't be taken from him and refused to work with law enforcement. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| My report reflects no findings of obstructive conduct on the part of... | ||
| Let me ask you another question. | ||
| President Trump has been indicted in the U.S. District Court of Southern Florida. | ||
| On 40 counts related to his possession of classified documents. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| I don't know the exact number of counts, but I know that an indictment is pending in that district. | ||
| Mr. Herr, you even wrote that after being given a number of chances to return classified documents and avoid prosecution, Mr. I should say President Trump allegedly did oppose. | ||
| And according to the indictment, He not only refused to return those documents over for many months, but he also obstructed justice by enlisting others to destroy evidence and lie about them. | ||
| Compare and contrasting to President Trump, President Trump turned classified documents over to the National Archives and the Department of Justice, and he consented to searching his home in other locations. | ||
| Wouldn't you say that's night and day when it comes to cooperation with law enforcement? | ||
| Congressman, the report does include an analysis and a comparison of the facts that are alleged with respect to former President Trump and does detail steps of cooperation that the president and his team took with respect to my investigation. | ||
| I would say, President Biden, you had his full cooperation in this investigation. | ||
| The report includes cooperative steps that the president took. | ||
| Would this be a factor in... | ||
| Your decision to prosecute? | ||
| It was a factor, and I explained it as such in the report, Congressman. | ||
| And you stated that the recommendation not to prosecute had nothing to do with the Department of Justice policy not to indict the sitting president. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| Well, the report says that even if it were not current Department of Justice policy that a sitting president may not be indicted on federal crimes, I would reach the same conclusion that criminal charges are not warranted. | ||
| Mr. Herr? | ||
| Have you set new precedent here today? | ||
| To the extent that the Department of Justice makes enforcement decisions or non-enforcement decisions in particular cases, those are precedents. | ||
| Those are events that future prosecutors do look to in an endeavor to make sure that federal law is implied consistently over time. | ||
| Mr. Hur, I'd say, based on your education and your career experience, you're a very, very competent prosecutor, a very, very well-prepared attorney. | ||
| I'm going to ask you one more time. | ||
| Does the fact that you're Republican, does that stop you from a thorough and fair investigation? | ||
| No. | ||
| Partisan politics had nothing to do with the work that I did or the report that I wrote or the decision that I reached. | ||
| Thank you very much for being here. | ||
| Mr. Chairman, I yield. | ||
| Gentleman yields back. | ||
| Gentleman from Wisconsin is recognized. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Attorney Herr, Webster's dictionary defines senile as exhibiting a decline of cognitive ability such as memory associated with old age. | |
| Mr. Herr, based on your report, did you find that the president was senile? | ||
| I did not. | ||
| That conclusion does not appear in my report, Congressman. | ||
| You felt, though, that the president's memory or lack thereof was a critical reason to decline prosecution. | ||
| The reason I'm asking this is whether you believe the president would be fit to stand trial, or do you think his lawyers would argue his incompetence to stand trial due to his state of mind? | ||
| Also, you know, was he in a place to actually... | ||
| Congressman, my report, to the extent that it addresses The President's memory gaps that we identified and the evidence that we obtained during our investigation, they are addressed in the context of determining how the jury would perceive, receive, and consider evidence relating to whether or not the President had willful intent when it came to retaining or disclosing national defense information. | ||
| Very good. | ||
| I'd like to focus my questioning on Chapter 14 of your report. | ||
| The classified documents found at the Penn-Biden Center. | ||
| You state in your report that the documents found at the Penn Biden Center were the most highly classified, sensitive, and compartmentalized materials recovered during your investigation. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| That is correct. | ||
| Many of the documents came from Mr. Biden's West Wing office. | ||
| That's also correct, isn't it? | ||
| I believe that is reflected in the report. | ||
| Did you ask if he had packed the boxes himself? | ||
| I believe that was one of the questions that we asked and that is reflected in the transcript now available to the committee. | ||
| I think it's important, how would you characterize the packing of these boxes? | ||
| Was it slow and meticulous or were they packed in haste without much scrutiny at all? | ||
| I don't recall off the top of my head exactly how we characterize it, but I think the gist of the evidence is that the manner in which files were Packed up and moved out at the end of the Obama administration was in something of a rushed manner. | ||
| Very good. | ||
| According to your report, the boxes were moved between multiple offices between Mr. Biden departing his West Wing office in January of 2017 and his arrival at the Penn-Biden Center's permanent offices in October of 2017. | ||
| Were any of these offices authorized to store classified information? | ||
| No. | ||
| When the boxes finally arrived at the Penn-Biden Center's permanent offices, how were they stored? | ||
| I believe when the materials were recovered, some of them were stored in a storage closet. | ||
| I believe others of them were in file cabinet drawers. | ||
| I would refer you to the report. | ||
| What's your assessment on security and access control measures at the Penn-Biden Center? | ||
| That was something that we looked at. | ||
| There were some security access controls at the Penn-Biden Center, but we did get a handle on people who had access to the office space during the time period when we believed the materials were there. | ||
| And there were other people, including students and some foreign dignitaries that visited that facility at the time. | ||
| Very good. | ||
| You anticipated my next question. | ||
| So when the boxes were discovered to have classified documents, more than five years later, who discovered these boxes? | ||
| It was Patrick Moore. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| Correct. | ||
| One of the president's personal counsel. | ||
| And did Mr. Moore have some type of active security clearance at the time? | ||
| No. | ||
| How about the executive assistant at the Penn-Biden Center? | ||
| No. | ||
| On page 265 of your report... | ||
| I'm sorry, Congressman, I may have misspoken there. | ||
| I am not certain whether or not that executive assistant had an active security clearance at the time. | ||
| Very good. | ||
| On page 265 of your report, you stated, when interviewed by FBI agents, Moore believed the small closet was initially locked. | ||
| And that the Penn Biden Center staff member provided a key to unlock it. | ||
| But his memory was fuzzy on that point. | ||
| But an interview with Mr. Biden's executive assistant seemed to contradict his statement. | ||
| Do you remember this exchange? | ||
| And did, in fact, it contradict each other? | ||
| Sir, you're asking if I remember the exchange with Mr. Moore during our interview with him? | ||
| Right. | ||
| Do you remember them contradicting each other? | ||
| I don't remember that contradiction specifically, but generally during the interview, sometimes we heard things from some witnesses that were in tension with what we heard from other witnesses, and we did our best to resolve those conflicts. | ||
| Just very quickly, in total, National Archives discovered nine documents totaling 44 pages with classification markings. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| From the Penn-Biden Center, yes. | ||
| And you declined charges because, in summarizing your analysis, you couldn't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that retention of the documents was willful. | ||
| Correct, sir. | ||
| Very good. | ||
| I yield back. | ||
| Gentleman yields back. | ||
| Gentle lady from Pennsylvania is recognized. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, and thank you, Mr. Herb, for your testimony today. | |
| With all the posturing that we've heard thus far this morning, I think it's important that we refocus and remember the conclusion that you reached on the first page. | ||
| And in the very first sentence of your report, which was, we conclude that no criminal charges are warranted in this matter. | ||
| Did I read that accurately? | ||
| You did, Congresswoman. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Your report also says, in addition to this shortage of evidence, there are other innocent explanations for the documents that we have not been able to refute. | ||
| Did I read that correctly? | ||
| Congresswoman, if you would give me a page citation. | ||
| Page six. | ||
| Six. | ||
| Yes, I see that language on page six. | ||
| Okay, thank you. | ||
| Now, in addition to those conclusions, your report details several material distinctions, as you called them, between President Biden's actions and former President Trump's mishandling of classified materials. | ||
| The facts are that President Biden cooperated with your investigation. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| He did. | ||
| And his team notified authorities when they discovered classified documents and he turned them over immediately. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| home and other properties. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| Correct. | ||
| And he voluntarily sat for an interview with you. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| Correct. | ||
| But when it comes to Mr. Trump's treatment of classified materials, your report states that according to the criminal indictment against him. | ||
| Correct. | ||
| and he obstructed justice by enlisting others to destroy evidence and lie about it. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| Now, you note in your testimony that the specific comments you made about President Biden's memory have gotten a lot of attention. | ||
| And as we've seen today, our Republican colleagues are again and again trying to weaponize those comments in a cheap attempt to score political points. | ||
| But as someone who's participated in trials, you know that witnesses, regardless of age, often have difficulty recalling specific statements or facts when asked about them many years after. | ||
| After those facts. | ||
| So let's take a quick look at a differing witness experiencing a lapse in memory during a deposition. | ||
| Your next wife was a woman by the name of Marla Maple. | ||
| Right. | ||
| All right, ladies and gentlemen, here we go. | ||
| Okay, so here's an important thing that we have to do right now. | ||
| We cannot listen to the same... | ||
| Clip. | ||
| Again and again and again. | ||
| Played by Democrats. | ||
| Who just are spending the entire time screaming, Trump! | ||
| But Trump! | ||
| That's the entire Democrat side of the dais. | ||
| That is the argument. | ||
| But Trump! | ||
| Orange man bad is the official argument. | ||
| Orange man bad. | ||
| Of the Democrats. | ||
| We wouldn't break into this hearing. | ||
| Without bringing you someone who truly has insight in all this, one of the smartest and sharpest federal prosecutors that we have ever had the pleasure of having on the show, Brett Tolman joins the show right now to briefly discuss what we have heard so far and to break down the arguments, ladies and gentlemen, that are happening in Congress right now against and for Robert Herz reports. | ||
| Let's go. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Let's go. | |
| you you Former U.S. Attorney and Executive Director of Right on Crime, Brett Tolman. | ||
| So here's what I'm hearing right now. | ||
| Joe Biden is senile, okay? | ||
| That's one button. | ||
| Or Joe Biden is of super sharp mind and should be charged with willfully maintaining classified documents. | ||
| And Democrats are sitting there hovering over both buttons, sweating profusely, and they don't know which one to push. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, Benny, I think that's right. | |
| There's a question that needs to be asked that has not been asked. | ||
| And that's a very simple question, and it goes to the heart of DOJ policy when they're dealing with a situation like this. | ||
| The question is, Mr. Herr, do you believe Joe Biden is competent? | ||
| That's the legal term that would mandate a decision by the Department of Justice to not prosecute. | ||
| If he cannot say he is incompetent and he is competent, then they're violating DOJ policy by not bringing a charge they know they have sufficient evidence to bring. | ||
| So you'll notice that he never addressed that in his report. | ||
| He does not go to the competency. | ||
| He goes to the jury. | ||
| He immediately goes to what would a jury do. | ||
| But that's not the standard, and that's not in the U.S. Attorney's Manual or the DOJ Manual. | ||
| What's in the manual is, do you have enough evidence that if you did go to trial, the evidence would be beyond a reasonable doubt sufficient to indict and to convict? | ||
| And that's it. | ||
| That's the standard, Benny. | ||
| So nobody is talking about the real elephant in the room that's screaming and yelling there, which is... | ||
| The gymnastics that Herr is going through to identify a reason or a basis to not charge when we have clear illegal conduct, willful illegal conduct, going as far back as when he was senator in the United States Senate. | ||
| So that has been established. | ||
| Multiple lines of question from the Republican side of the dais saying, okay, Joe Biden had all these classified documents. | ||
| Not only that, he kept them and then made money off of them, writing a memoir that netted him $8 million, shared them with the ghostwriter of that memoir, and then... | ||
| And then the ghostwriter deleted and destroyed that evidence. | ||
| Matt Gaetz asking, what the hell do you have to do to get charged as a Democrat by the Biden DOJ? | ||
| I mean, as somebody who's brought many federal cases, as somebody who's like reviewed a whole lot of criminals. | ||
| It seems like there are quite a number of laws being broken here, and the I'm the old doddering nice guy who has a faulty memory isn't a great alibi. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, Benny, I recall a very wise man once saying to me that where you stand on an issue often depends on where you sit. | |
| And this is what we have. | ||
| We have the Democrats that are sitting with power, and they have the DOJ, and they have Biden, and they, you know, what's their position? | ||
| Their position is that none of this amounted to a sufficient case that should be brought. | ||
| Echoing the words of Jim Comey that no reasonable prosecutor would bring this. | ||
| The reality is there's more obstruction of justice in the Hillary Clinton and the Joe Biden than there has been alleged against Trump. | ||
| There's more dissemination of classified information than has been alleged in the indictments against Trump. | ||
| There's more effort and less of a defense for individuals like Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden who cannot argue that they had any sort of legal basis for having personally possessed these classified documents. | ||
| Trump has the ability to argue that he can possess them, that there's statutes that recognize that he can possess classified documents after his presidency. | ||
| They don't have that. | ||
| So the DOJ is going through a tremendous exercise in hypocrisy, showing they're willing to use their incredible power to go after a political adversary, and at the same time, pulling the shield up to protect someone that they do not want charged. | ||
| And they're doing it in every aspect of any investigation of Joe Biden or his family. | ||
| I just don't understand the precedent being set here. | ||
| And that's something that I've sort of now suddenly tuned into listening to this line of questioning, which is now the precedent is if you're forgetful, you don't get charged when you're guilty of crimes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I've never in my 25 years in the criminal justice system, I have never seen DOJ take a position that an individual may present sympathetic to a jury. | |
| In fact, there's rules against taking and pursuing a case that you have sufficiency for a conviction and then not bringing the case. | ||
| Unless there is something that is a flaw in the actual evidence, the facts, or the law to prevent the case. | ||
| Now, that doesn't mean that prosecutor discretion is not there. | ||
| It is. | ||
| And they can refuse to bring a case for many reasons. | ||
| But what they can't do is right in front of our faces, charge one individual with the exact same crimes and violations as another similarly situated individual, you know, defiantly goes on his way. | ||
| Again, you spent decades as a U.S. attorney, so you know these rules. | ||
| There is a clause that sets the president... | ||
| In a different legal category than, let's say, a senator, a regular American, somebody serving in the military, or even a vice president. | ||
| And so with Joe Biden, who has been hoovering up documents since his time as a senator, which has to preclude the fact that Joe Biden went into a SCIF, a secure facility, as senator, because only senators are allowed in those SCIFs, and took the documents himself. | ||
| That's the only logical explanation, is that Joe Biden did this himself. | ||
| You have to then, you know, you have to delineate because you said that these cases are similar, but Joe Biden wasn't president when he was doing this. | ||
| Donald Trump was the president. | ||
| And that does create quite the deviation, no? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| So two things. | ||
| The Presidential Records Act is very clear. | ||
| The president maintains a clearance after he's been president. | ||
| They also have the ability to utilize classified documents in their residence. | ||
| They designate an area that serves as a SCIF. | ||
| They can review documents. | ||
| Was there sloppiness? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Was there criminal intent? | ||
| None. | ||
| I have heard none. | ||
| Second, when Joe Biden was in the Senate, you know where the SCIF is, Benny, in the Senate? | ||
| You have to go down to the crypt. | ||
| You have to go into the crypt. | ||
| You have to go to a secret door. | ||
| You go into an elevator that goes up to two more doors that have security on them, and then you enter into a room after depositing your cell phone and any other electronic device. | ||
| For him to take classified documents, it would have to be a concerted effort going through several layers of security down the elevator, out the skiff, and then out of the Capitol to his office. | ||
| I mean, that shows the level at which he went to. | ||
| That's not a doddering, old, sloppy individual. | ||
| That's somebody that has to take a document through multiple levels of security in order to keep it. | ||
| So I do want to touch on this because you tweeted about it momentarily, looks like one hour ago. | ||
| You said that Joe Biden willfully retained and gave classified information to a third party that destroyed the evidence. | ||
| When he heard that there was a special counsel. | ||
| Well, I mean, obviously that's obstruction of justice, right? | ||
| I mean, this is like, you can't get more clear-cut than that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It is obstruction of justice. | |
| It meets the definition. | ||
| What I would be investigating and what her should have investigated is was there communication between Biden and this individual? | ||
| Because if there is, then there's conspiracy to obstruct justice, and it may include Joe Biden. | ||
| And, you know, there's leads and avenues of investigation that we don't see. | ||
| Any individual that is looking to expose the full nature of the criminal behavior is going to pursue multiple lines of investigation in order to get to the bottom of how involved was Joe Biden. | ||
| Instead, we have the bare minimum. | ||
| We have investigation. | ||
| We have witnesses that are spoken to. | ||
| But we don't have an investigator that begins with this assumption. | ||
| There are documents scattered over the residents and the offices of Joe Biden that are illegally possessed. | ||
| Now, how did we get there? | ||
| Instead, you read this 200-page report, and it is an effort to manipulate and to wring hands at avoiding bringing the charges. | ||
| And in the end, the recommendation is staggering. | ||
| Because he can't ignore that there's criminal behavior. | ||
| He can't ignore that there was intent. | ||
| He can't ignore that there's potential conspiracy to cover up what he did. | ||
| And yet he falls on one thing and one thing only for why he does not recommend charges. | ||
| And that is that he might present to a jury as a sympathetic older man with a bad memory. | ||
| It's mind boggling, Benny, that that's where we're at. | ||
| And I have respect for Robert Herr. | ||
| I would assume, I don't know this, Benny, but there were discussions at very high levels of the Department of Justice indicating that they believed this case, this investigation should come out a certain way, and he achieved that result in embarrassing fashion. | ||
| So, I believe this is a really important question, and it's why we love having you on the program, because you truly have a depth of knowledge and experience with this. | ||
| As a U.S. attorney, you have brought hundreds, thousands of federal cases. | ||
| I'm not sure. | ||
| Perhaps you could tell me the exact number. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| But I know that your experience, you are one of the best. | ||
| Given the evidence and given the findings of this report, just on their face, what would you have done if you were special counsel? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, Benny, I'll tell you, I did reach the over 1,000 mark in terms of felony cases that I brought. | |
| I had multiple trials. | ||
| I had cases that I declined to prosecute. | ||
| This investigation would stack up as probably one of the five easiest cases to present and get a conviction on that I would have had in my time as a federal prosecutor. | ||
| So you would have said that Joe Biden willfully Well, Benny, the kind of defendant I would want on the stand is Joe Biden. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I want somebody like that who is still competent, whose memory is poor, and whose lies are, you know, expansive. | |
| I mean, that's the kind of person you want on the stand. | ||
| And that's the kind of person that you prosecute. | ||
| Now, if he's incompetent, then that's a different animal. | ||
| And the DOJ has rules that say if you believe an individual is incompetent, then you do take it to a competency evaluation. | ||
| And that's where experts would come in and evaluate Joe Biden. | ||
| But they didn't want to do that either. | ||
| So now he is competent to stand trial. | ||
| And he would make a poor witness. | ||
| And he's lied. | ||
| And that's a person we're not going to prosecute? | ||
| I mean, that's the one you want in the courtroom. | ||
| That's exactly right. | ||
| Lying to the DOJ, of course, this is like General Flynn. | ||
| These are the greatest sins you can possibly do. | ||
| And somebody lied to the DOJ. | ||
| I mean, their lives are over. | ||
| You go after their families, you go after them, Paul Manafort, everyone. | ||
| If you lie to the DOJ, you're done. | ||
| Yet we have this clip of Robert Hur saying Joe Biden lied. | ||
| Matt Gaetz says that Joe Biden said he didn't ever retain classified documents. | ||
| And he says, is that true or not? | ||
| And Robert is like, no. | ||
| Dude's lying, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
In a classic, you know, melodramatic moment, Jerry Nadler says, you don't have any evidence that he lied, do you? | |
| And Herr has to say, well, actually, yes, I do. | ||
| He lied to us and may have told some lies earlier before the investigation regarding the classified material. | ||
| So, I mean, this is this is made for TV. | ||
| And it's, you know, we're in the absurd realm of of DOJ believing we're all so ignorant and so stupid that we can't see what's actually happening right now in their decision making on Biden. | ||
| Have you been convinced by any of the arguments from the Democrat side of the podium here in Congress, the committee hearing room? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, what I've seen is they have the ability— To say one person, Trump, is charged. | |
| And here are the distinctions and the differences. | ||
| And we'll pick and choose. | ||
| We'll cherry pick what we choose to say. | ||
| And so you're in a no-win situation where the individuals that control the power to bring charges are the same individuals that are then going to utilize that to justify those charges and justify why they're not bringing them against their candidate. | ||
| And so what I've seen from the Democrats is absolute failure to address any of the profound issues that her investigation and report expose. | ||
| And they can't seem to understand that the American people are seeing her say that this is a doddering, old, feeble, poor-minded individual right now. | ||
| But yeah, he's totally fine. | ||
| He's totally fine representing the country. | ||
| And boy, what a state of the union that was. | ||
| And so they think too little of the rest of us that we can't figure out the box that they point, you know, the corner that they've painted themselves into. | ||
| So it seems like the Democrat side unwittingly is like sort of upset that Joe Biden wasn't charged because you have to hit one of the buttons. | ||
| There are only two red buttons in front of you. | ||
| You have to hit one because the... | ||
| You know, one button. | ||
| He obviously held all these documents and they were obviously illegally withheld. | ||
| He took them willfully. | ||
| Like, that's what the report finds. | ||
| And so you have to hit the button. | ||
| Either Joe Biden is senile and he can't stand trial. | ||
| So senile he can't stand trial. | ||
| Joe Biden deserves to be charged. | ||
| He's of right mind. | ||
| He deserves to be charged. | ||
| And it seems like Democrats are strangely, like, upset that he wasn't charged. | ||
| Is that what's going on here? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, and then you combine many of the fact that they have just in recent, you know, period of time, they've decided, DOJ has decided to bring these charges. | |
| I've currently got a couple of these cases right now that I am defending individuals in. | ||
| And one's a classified documents, you know, possession, illegal possession, violation of the Espionage Act. | ||
| And this individual is being charged and they went through the screening process and DOJ appropriately applied all of its standards. | ||
| And they did not do so with Donald Trump. | ||
| They didn't follow the same protocol. | ||
| And then they embarrassingly have avoided it just by blatantly not deciding to bring charges against Joe Biden. | ||
| In a perfect world, they're all charged or they're not. | ||
| Unless they have a substantial defense. | ||
| And the only one I see that has a substantial defense is Donald Trump. | ||
| He has the ability to indicate that these are presidential records. | ||
| He has the ability to declassify documents. | ||
| Whether he did so or not, he can do so. | ||
| And those are defenses that would prevent a DOJ from pursuing the case. | ||
| So they've done the exact opposite in every instance in which they had authority and were trying to exercise that authority. | ||
| So why did they do it? | ||
| And why are they trying to rush to a conviction? | ||
| They did it simply for one reason. | ||
| They cannot tolerate Donald Trump becoming president of the United States again. | ||
| It's too much of a threat to their power and authority. | ||
| We only have a minute left here, but I suppose I want to ask you the question, which is, you know, Donald Trump becomes president. | ||
| Odds are, at the very least, if you look at the polls and if you look at the way the country's going, Democrats have just really, it's really foobar, right? | ||
| Like, they effed around and now they're going to find out. | ||
| Donald Trump becomes president. | ||
| What happens here, right? | ||
| Like, I'm looking at the landscape and you're looking at like a Supreme Court. | ||
| That may decide that presidential immunity doesn't exist. | ||
| And so therefore, Donald Trump goes and brings all these charges, these espionage charges against Joe Biden, because he's clearly guilty of that, right? | ||
| You're clearly guilty of sharing classified information to make money based on the federal government's own report. | ||
| It seems like they're in a really tough position right now. | ||
| What would you advise Donald Trump to do when he is sworn in on the Bible in 2025, January? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I would say, first and foremost, get an attorney general that is one that you have confidence that they're not going to play political games, but instead they're going to look at facts and the law and they're going to apply it, whether it's a Republican or a Democrat. | |
| Put them in office and let them go back and review. | ||
| And I'll promise you this, you have someone like that in the attorney general's office and the Biden family is spending the rest of their lives in federal prison. | ||
| It's not just the Espionage Act. | ||
| It is the corruption, the money from our adversary countries. | ||
| It is the pay-to-play scheme and plan, the conspiracy that was put into place. | ||
| There is no question in my mind that the law, honestly and fairly applied to the Bidens, as it has been to so many families and individuals in this country, would dictate and result in them spending the rest of their lives in federal prison. | ||
| And just to pin this down, you alluded to this earlier in the conversation. | ||
| You think that Robert Herr was forced politically to come to this conclusion in spite of the evidence? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think this reads as an individual who was told, no matter what you do, we need to not recommend charges against Joe Biden. | |
| And that's what you see is the result. | ||
| A fairly thorough investigation that did lack some lines of investigation that were probably purposeful, but a thorough investigation that concluded violations of law and then a grotesque conclusion to ignore what was found in the report to reach, I think, what was probably a lot of pressure to reach, which was do not recommend charges against Joe Biden. | ||
| Yeah, they've certainly twisted themselves into pretzels in order to not recommend. | ||
| I recommend something, however. | ||
| I recommend that you follow Brett Tolman. | ||
| This is Brett Tolman's ex-account. | ||
| The Stampede of Justice roars behind him. | ||
| Right on Crime is an amazing organization. | ||
| Also follow them. | ||
| There we go, ladies and gentlemen. | ||
| I will show you how to do it right on screen, right there, live. | ||
| And make sure that you are listening to wise people in this moment. | ||
| There's a lot. | ||
| of fake information out there and a lot of morons talking, including, but not limiting to, a guy who thought Guam would tip over if we put too many people on it, Hank Johnson, he's asking the tough questions. | ||
| A guy who slept with a Chinese pie, Brett, he's asking the tough questions. | ||
| A guy who got kicked off the Foreign Affairs Committee because he lied so much is asking all the questions today. | ||
| So, really special group of people Democrats have brought as their petitioners. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's well said. | |
| Well done. | ||
| God bless you, Brett. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks, Ben. | |
| Ladies and gentlemen, we are back at the hearing. | ||
| We didn't want to miss Brett. | ||
| He had a short window, and so we wanted to grab that information. | ||
| It's so important to listen to experts. | ||
| Ladies and gentlemen, here's the hearing once more. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And in fact, in the transcript, it shows that you asked him the month. | |
| And do you know what he said, Mr. Herr? | ||
| He said, oh God, May 30th. | ||
| Would you like to correct the record? | ||
| His memory was pretty firm on the month and the day. | ||
| Congresswoman, I don't believe that's correct with respect to the transcript, but if you could refer me to a specific page, I'd be happy to look. | ||
| I've read about it in reporting. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I yield back. | ||
| Congressman, what the hell are you talking about? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. Herr, why did the White House ask you to remove parts of the report? | |
| What was the reason they gave for that? | ||
| I don't have the letter in front of me, Congressman. | ||
| I believed that among their reasons was that they contested or that they asserted that certain language in the report was inconsistent with DOJ policy. | ||
| The day that your report came out, the president gave a live news conference on national television. | ||
| Did you watch that news conference? | ||
| I watched the press conference, yes. | ||
| What was your reaction to seeing the president personally attack you and your team? | ||
| Congressman, I'm here to talk about the work that went into the report and my declination decision and my explanation of it for the attorney. | ||
| And it wasn't just the president. | ||
| Anthony Coley, former spokesman for Merrick Garland, has said that Democrats should focus their ire on her. | ||
| The president's personal attorney, Bob Bauer, said that your report is a shabby piece of work and a shoddy work product. | ||
| Do you agree with that characterization of your report? | ||
| I disagree vehemently with that characterization of my report. | ||
| I also disagree. | ||
| I think it's very well written, well considered, and comprehensive. | ||
| Do you think it's appropriate for the administration to be attacking the work of a special counsel that it appointed itself? | ||
| Congressman, I'm not going to comment on the propriety of the administration's reaction to my report. | ||
| What I can tell you is that I stand by the report and the work that went into it. | ||
| Today, the ranking member started his opening statement by saying, Mr. Herr completely exonerated President Biden and called your report a total and complete exoneration. | ||
| Mr. Hur, did you completely exonerate President Biden? | ||
| That is not what my report does. | ||
| Was your report a total and complete exoneration? | ||
| That is not what the report says. | ||
| So the statement by the ranking member was incorrect, yes? | ||
| As I said, the report is not an exoneration. | ||
| That word does not appear in my report. | ||
| Based on the facts and anticipation of defenses presented in your report, could a reasonable juror have voted to convict? | ||
| As I said in the report, some reasonable jurors may have reached the inferences that the government would present in its case in chief. | ||
| So a reasonable juror could have voted to convict based on the facts that you presented? | ||
| Correct. | ||
| If you were on the jury, would you have voted to convict? | ||
| I have not engaged in that thought exercise, Congressman. | ||
| And so what I'd like to stick to is what's in the report, which is my assessment as a prosecutor. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And what you did find in the report is that the president, page 200, risks serious damage to America's national security through his handling and mishandling of classified materials. | ||
| And you identify, quote, a strong motive for the way he handled those materials. | ||
| Two of the motives you cited was his desire to run for president and his desire to sell books. | ||
| So a reasonable inference for your report is that the president risks serious damage to America's national security in order to make money and advance his personal political ambitions. | ||
| The report includes a description of the evidence and... | ||
| Different inferences that reasonable jurors could draw from the evidence. | ||
| And you also note that the president described his predecessors' handling of classified materials as totally irresponsible. | ||
| And your report concludes that Mr. Biden's emphatic and unqualified conclusion that keeping marked classified documents unsecured in one's home is totally irresponsible applies equally to his own decision. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| That language does appear in the report. | ||
| You cite as a mitigating factor the fact that the president cooperated in the investigation. | ||
| But at the time that the investigation was happening and these acts of cooperation occurred, the Mar-a-Lago investigation was already a matter of public record, correct? | ||
| I believe that's correct. | ||
| So we already had a public debate about the handling of classified documents and the potential application of the criminal laws to that general set of circumstances. | ||
| I think that's fair. | ||
| And so the president, when he decided to cooperate or not cooperate, had to know that that decision to cooperate or not cooperate would become known to the public and he would be judged accordingly. | ||
| Accordingly, is that correct? | ||
| I'm not in a position to opine on what was or was not in the presidency. | ||
| But it's relevant to your analysis as to whether or not it counts as a mitigating factor. | ||
| If he knew that he was going to have to be judged based on whether he cooperated or not, that would lessen its value as a mitigating factor. | ||
| So did that in your analysis lessen its value? | ||
| We undertook a comprehensive assessment. | ||
| So that specific factor, did it lessen its value as a mitigating factor? | ||
| That and all facts relating to... | ||
| Another factor you discussed is deterrence. | ||
| And you say that deterrence actually, the factor actually counsels against bringing charges here because you said, as for general deterrence, future presidents and vice presidents are already likely to be deterred by the multiple recent criminal investigations and one prosecution of current and former president and vice presidents for mishandling classified documents. | ||
| So that one prosecution, of course, is the indictment brought by Jack Smith. | ||
| So by the very terms of your analysis, Jack Smith's indictment actually counseled against and was accounted against bringing charges in this case. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| I'm sorry, Congressman. | ||
| I don't follow your drift. | ||
| Well, you said that there's already deterrence because there's this prosecution out there in a prior case related to classified documents. | ||
| So we don't need to bring another case to establish deterrent value. | ||
| That was the essence of your analysis, correct? | ||
| Congressman, what I'll say is that I will stand by the way and the specific words in which I characterize my assessment of deterrence value of a case under the principles of federal prosecution that's on page 254 and 255 of my case. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| My time is out, but I'll just add the perverse implication here is that the administration, by the very terms of your analysis, actually made it less likely that the president would face charges by Jack Smith bringing an indictment. | ||
| Thank you, and I yield back. | ||
| Mr. Chairman, I have a unanimous consent request. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I ask unanimous consent to enter into the record two documents. | ||
| First, the superseding indictment against Donald Trump in the Southern District of Florida, where he is currently facing criminal charges on 40 counts, including obstruction of justice, lying to the FBI, his unlawful, willful retention of national defense information, and withholding the concealment of documents from law enforcement, among other things. | ||
| That was the shortened version. | ||
| And my second document, to clarify for you, sir, Mr. Herr, from the transcription, page 82, the words are, President Biden's, what month did Bo die? | ||
| Oh, God, May 30th. | ||
| A searing memory. | ||
| I ask unanimous consent. | ||
| Without objection. | ||
| The gentlewoman from Georgia is recognized. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chair and ranking member, for this hearing, and thank you so much. | ||
| Spending so much time with us today, Special Counsel Herr. | ||
| In accordance with the law, classified information must be treated with the highest respect and also protected. | ||
| And President Biden has made it clear during this investigation and long before that he agrees. | ||
| In response to Mr. Herr's report, he said, and I quote, over my career in public service, I've always worked to protect America's security. | ||
| I take these issues seriously, and no one has ever questioned that, end quote. | ||
| The Special Counsel's report makes clear that this is unfortunately a common occurrence for classified documents to get swept up into members of Congress or executive branch officials' personal effects. | ||
| And as soon as President Biden discovered that he had mistakenly kept classified material, he took swift and immediate action to ensure that those materials were returned, and he fully cooperated. | ||
| He did this for 40 years! | ||
| President Biden's predecessor when dealing with the issue of having classified materials took very different steps. | ||
| In 2016, Donald Trump declared, and I quote, I'm going to enforce all the laws concerning the protection of classified information. | ||
| No one will be above the law, end quote. | ||
| Yet when his lawyer told him that it was going to be a crime, If he didn't return the classified documents that he had after NARA, the DOJ and the FBI requested multiple times that Trump returned the classified documents, yet he hid them. | ||
| Trump himself acknowledged that the same year that service members have risked their lives to acquire classified intelligence to protect our country, yet he decided that His desire to keep these documents outweighed the potential loss of life for these people if those papers got out. | ||
| Not only did Trump have a legal obligation, he also had a moral obligation to all of us. | ||
| And he failed to live up to that. | ||
| Mr. Hur, thank you for being here today. | ||
| I'd like to talk about your report regarding President Biden and some of your findings. | ||
| And for the sake of time, if you don't mind just answering yes or no, please answer this question. | ||
| Page 187 of your report reads, At no point did we find evidence that Mr. Biden intended or had reason to believe the information would be used to injure the United States or to benefit a foreign nation. | ||
| Is this what you reported? | ||
| For the sake of time, please answer yes or no. | ||
| Congresswoman, you said page 187? | ||
| Of your report, yes. | ||
| Ah, yes. | ||
| At no point did we find evidence. | ||
| Yes, that language is on page 187. | ||
| Okay, so then this is what you reported, correct? | ||
| That language is in my report. | ||
| Okay, and Mr. Hur, you acknowledged on page 12 of your report that there are, as you said, numerous previous instances in which marked classified documents have been discovered, intermixed with the personal... | ||
| Papers of former executive branch officials and members of Congress. | ||
| Please, once again, can you confirm for us, yes or no, the answer whether this is what you reported? | ||
| That language appears at page 12 of my report. | ||
| Page 323 also reads, as a matter of historical context, there have been numerous previous incidents in which marked classified documents have been discovered, intermixed with the personal papers of former executive branch officials and members of Congress. | ||
| Is this what you reported? | ||
| That language appears at page 323. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Now it's my understanding that this has happened before. | ||
| Where classified documents are swept up into official papers. | ||
| So, Mr. Herr, aside from Donald Trump, are you aware of similar instances in history where officials who have had these classified documents engaged in a months-long, elaborate scheme to hide those documents from federal law enforcement officials? | ||
| The one case that comes to mind that we do address in the report is the prosecution of General Petraeus. | ||
| Are these historical examples, aside from Donald Trump, where officials instructed their aides to delete evidence pertaining to those classified documents? | ||
| That was not present in the Petraeus prosecution, no. | ||
| So, the American people deserve, as we've always been saying all along here, that we deserve a leader who will not put themselves above the law, but will work with law enforcement and hold themselves accountable. | ||
| Thank you, and I yield back. | ||
| The gentleman from Wyoming is recognized. | ||
| Special Counselor Herr, when you determined that no criminal charges should be brought against President Biden in this matter, you focused on the specific facts surrounding the classified documents where President Biden stored them and on his memory and age. | ||
| You wrote that President Biden's, quote, memory was significantly limited during his recorded interviews with the ghostwriter in 2017 and during his interview with the special counsel's office in 2023. | ||
| You also expressed concern that prospective jurors would be persuaded by President Biden's presentation as a sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory. | ||
| Your assessment, however, was focused on how President Biden would currently present to a jury if he stood trial. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That was an element of my explanation to the Attorney General for my decision. | |
| It was not the only element. | ||
| Okay, that wasn't my question, but it was one of the things that we were considering was his current state of mind, his current memory. | ||
| Correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
One of the things that I considered would be how if a trial, whenever a trial... | |
| Okay. | ||
| You did not compare President Biden's current memory or condition with his memory or condition when he was in the Senate or when he left the vice presidency and took the classified documents subject to your investigation. | ||
| Is that right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Actually, I believe that's not correct, Congresswoman. | |
| One of the things that's in the report is an assessment of the president's... | ||
| Memory based on recordings from the 2016-2017 timeframe, recordings of conversations between Mr. Biden and his ghostwriter, and comparing that with the president's memory that he exhibited during our interview of him in October of 2023. | ||
| So there was a comparison there. | ||
| Okay, so, but unless there was some issue undisclosed to the American people during his 50 years in office, you found that Mr. Biden fully understood his legal responsibility related to the handling of classified materials, which is why you concluded in your report that Mr. Biden, quote, willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen. | ||
| You state that on page one, correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I believe that what I stated on page one was that... | |
| We identified evidence that Mr. Biden willfully retained classified information after the end of his vice presidency, but ultimately we concluded that the evidence was insufficient to warrant... | ||
| I understand that. | ||
| Please listen to my question. | ||
| What I'm getting at is that Mr. Biden fully understood that he could not keep classified information at his home as both a former senator and vice president. | ||
| Isn't that right? | ||
| He understood that, correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
My understanding is that based on the evidence, my assessment was that a jury... | |
| That isn't what my question was. | ||
| Please listen to my question. | ||
| My question was that Mr. Biden understood when he was a senator and vice president that he could not keep classified materials at his home, at his garage, and in other offices. | ||
| Is that fair? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't think that's accurate, Congresswoman, because when Mr. Biden was vice president, he was authorized to have classified material in his home. | |
| But after he left, he knew that he was not entitled to keep classified information at his home, correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
After he left, there is evidence to suggest that he knew that he could not legally have classified information at his home. | |
| However, there is evidence with respect to his notebooks that he believed he was authorized to keep the notebooks at home based on... | ||
| Based on precedent. | ||
| You know, I guess the way that I would put it is this. | ||
| President Biden knew better. | ||
| He knew that he wasn't entitled to keep these documents when he was a senator, and he knew he wasn't entitled to keep these documents after he had left the vice presidency. | ||
| But because he's now suffering from an impaired memory, as you so delicately put it, he got away with it. | ||
| Is that fair? | ||
| No, because he's a criminal, and it's protected by criminals. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Congresswoman, what I stated in my report is that there's certainly evidence that some jurors could infer to suggest that Mr. Biden willfully retained and disclosed national defense information. | |
| But in my judgment, the likely outcome of a trial, the probable outcome of a trial is not a conviction. | ||
| You know, Mr. Herr, I have represented a variety of clients over the years in actions against the federal government over, in fact, several decades of time. | ||
| It's been my experience that Mr. | ||
| Herr, having been a long-term DOJ prosecutor, can you please explain why those people without the last name of Clinton or Biden are typically treated quite differently and seem to be the only ones who are never held accountable for violating the law? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Nice. | |
| Congresswoman? | ||
| One of the things that I explain in my report is the fact that there are historical precedents with respect to former occupants of the White House and their retention of classified materials after they leave. | ||
| I'm asking specifically about Mrs. Clinton and Mrs. Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Congresswoman, I don't have any opinion to articulate with respect to the investigation relating to Mrs. Clinton. | |
| I yield back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Gentlewoman from Texas is recognized. | |
| Mr. Herr, Special Counsel Jack Smith has charged Donald Trump with 40 counts related to his unlawful possession of classified documents. | ||
| The most serious charge carries a penalty of 20 years in prison. | ||
| According to the Trump indictment, Trump stored those documents at Mar-a-Lago, which hosted events for tens of thousands of members and guests, end quote. | ||
| The indictment continues, quote, Trump stored his boxes containing classified documents in various locations at the Mar-a-Lago Club, including in a ballroom, a bathroom, and a shower, an office space, his bedroom, and a storage room. | ||
| Mar-a-Lago is more than a mansion or a compound. | ||
| It is a club with a membership program that sells access to the public. | ||
| It has hundreds of people moving through it at any given time. | ||
| Staffing it alone required 150 staff members. | ||
| And while those classified national security documents sat in places like his ballroom, Trump hosted more than 150 social events like weddings and movie premieres, which thousands of people attended. | ||
| In brief, Special Counsel Smith has alleged that Trump willfully and knowingly took highly classified documents to a location accessible by tens of thousands of people. | ||
| Mr. Herr, was President Biden's residence accessible to tens of thousands of people? | ||
| No. | ||
| Did President Biden ever bring tens of thousands of people into spaces where he stored classified material? | ||
| Not to my knowledge. | ||
| Did Joe Biden advertise and sell memberships to his home that would allow members Not that I'm aware of. | ||
| No. | ||
| Moving on, among the 150 staff members working at Mar-a-Lago was a Trump aide named Walt Nauda. | ||
| According to Special Counsel Smith, Trump ordered Nowda to move boxes of documents so that they could not be found by people looking for them. | ||
| Mr. Herr, did President Biden ever direct his staff to move documents so that you or the FBI could not find them? | ||
| We did not identify evidence of that. | ||
| In fact, according to your report, as soon as Bob Bauer discovered material in President Biden's residence, he contacted John Lausch and the president immediately consented to an FBI search of his home. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| My report does state that. | ||
| And you found no evidence that any documents were moved prior to that search. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| Correct. | ||
| That's in stark contrast to Donald Trump. | ||
| President Biden did not obstruct your investigation. | ||
| He was fully compliant. | ||
| And with access to the millions of documents he gave you and dozens of hours of witness interviews he facilitated, you were able to fully and totally exonerate him of any Criminal wrongdoing. | ||
| I thank you, Mr. Herr. | ||
| And before I yield back, Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to enter into the record an excerpt from the committee's transcribed interview with Stephen D 'Antonio, former assistant director in charge of the FBI Washington Field Office. | ||
| On June 7, 2023, in which Mr. D 'Antonio explained that the FBI executed a search warrant for classified material at Mar-a-Lago because there was probable cause to believe that Donald Trump did not fully comply with a subpoena to turn over classified documents. | ||
| Without objection. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| I yield back. | ||
| The gentleman yields back. | ||
| The gentlelady from Florida is recognizing. | ||
| Oh, excuse me. | ||
| Gentlemen from the ranking members recognize. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. Chairman, I have three unanimous consent requests. | |
| First, I ask unanimous consent to enter into the record the publisher's webpage for President Biden's 2017 book, Promise Me Dad, which shows that the book is a deeply moving memoir about the year that President Biden's son Bo died. | ||
| I also ask unanimous consent to enter page 97 of Mr. Her's report. | ||
| Which says that President Biden's book is not known to contain classified information. | ||
| Not objection. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Finally, I ask unanimous consent to enter into the record on February 5, 2020, for a letter from President Biden's counsel to Special Counsel Herr that clarifies that President Biden's 2017 book, quote, does not contain classified information and there has never been any suggestion to the contrary, close quote. | |
| Not objection. | ||
| Chair now recognizes the gentlelady from Florida. | ||
| Ms. Lee. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Special Counsel Herr, for joining us here today to discuss your investigation regarding President Biden's mishandling of classified documents. | |
| This has become an issue of great interest to all Americans and, of course, to all of us here today. | ||
| As is outlined in your report, despite the discovery of confidential and top-secret records located in the president's personal residence in Delaware, including in his garage, office, and basement, the department declined prosecution, and my colleagues' questions today have focused on the highlights from your report, specifically referring to President Biden's mental capacity, his willful disregard for the law as a private citizen, and how he would be perceived if presented to a jury of his peers. | ||
| Dependent upon, and I'll use your words from the report, how this sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory Handled and managed the storage of these confidential documents, the national security of the United States might have been put at great risk because of the president's behavior. | ||
| And so one of the things we must consider today is how we can ensure that our national security will not be continually put at risk when under the leadership of the same well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory. | ||
| Since the release of the report, to your knowledge, has the Justice Department started to analyze a damage assessment of what may have been disclosed by these documents being mishandled and any ongoing national security risks from the inappropriate storage and retention of the documents? | ||
| Congressman, my understanding is that such a damage assessment is underway in coordination and cooperation with the members of the intelligence community. | ||
| And do you, today, for us, have any information about the status of that investigation or how long it might take to conclude? | ||
| I do not, Congresswoman. | ||
| I'd like to turn your attention to a discussion of the distinction between proving the underlying elements of an offense and the concept of an obstruction of justice charge. | ||
| Is it correct, Special Counsel Herr, that in some circumstances as a federal prosecutor, you may investigate the underlying offense, an underlying offense? | ||
| Choose not to charge that offense, but still have developed sufficient evidence to charge a defendant with obstruction of justice. | ||
| I think as a matter of law, theoretically, that could occur. | ||
| I can't bring to mind specific examples of that happening, but I suppose that if that were to happen, it would be a more difficult case to try from a prosecutor's perspective. | ||
| The elements are distinct, though, are they not? | ||
| They are a distinct element. | ||
| And isn't it similar to a case where a federal prosecutor undergoes an investigation and ultimately doesn't pursue the original charge they were investigating, but during the course of the investigation concludes that a false statement was made to a federal law enforcement officer and brings a charge under 1001? | ||
| That could happen. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And again, there too, the elements would be different. | ||
| Correct. | ||
| And in reaching your final decision related to the recommendation to decline prosecution, you considered both the underlying elements of the offenses at issue and also the principles of federal prosecution. | ||
| Is that right? | ||
| Correct. | ||
| Now, the principles of federal prosecution, those are things that may vary case to case. | ||
| Is that right? | ||
| The determinations under the principles of federal prosecution are very fact and circumstance dependent. | ||
| But the elements of the criminal offense are not. | ||
| Isn't that also correct? | ||
| Elements are defined by law, and they do not vary from case to case. | ||
| And thus, those elements of the underlying criminal offense would be exactly the same from one defendant to the next to the next. | ||
| Isn't that right? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So you would expect, would you not, that a prosecutor who was considering the underlying offenses that you were considering here Would be looking at exactly the same elements and requirements of proof that you did on the underlying charges. | ||
| Prosecutors assessing their cases under the same statutes must. | ||
| Consider the same elements with respect to those statutes. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Thank you, Special Counsel Herr. | ||
| And then if we could turn back to the concept of those principles of federal prosecution, those are the additional factors, aggravating or mitigating, that you might consider in ultimately reaching a charge of decision here. | ||
| Is that right? | ||
| They do include such things that are referred to as aggravating and mitigating circumstances. | ||
| There's one thing I want to go back to, though, to be clear. | ||
| It's been said today that your report is tantamount to a total exoneration of President Biden. | ||
| That's not correct, is it? | ||
| That is not correct. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Thank you, sir. | ||
| I yield the balance of my time to the chair. | ||
| Gentlelady is back. | ||
| The chair now recognizes Gentlelady from North Carolina. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Mr. Herr, also for your patience. | |
| You're almost to, what, three and a half hours? | ||
| So almost as much as Biden. | ||
| Throughout your report, you repeatedly cite and credit. | ||
| A number of innocent explanations for the presence of classified materials at the president's home and other locations. | ||
| Innocent explanations that you admit that you cannot refute. | ||
| And I'd like to just focus on a few of them and I'll give you citations. | ||
| One of these explanations for the presence of classified documents is that a member of the president's staff maintained those documents when he was the vice president and then mistakenly included them in sets of documents that were later sent to locations such as the Penn-Biden Center and the University of Delaware. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| I believe that's correct, but if you have a specific page number for me, that would help me. | ||
| We'll get you one. | ||
| That would be great. | ||
| You also found that another innocent explanation to be more likely than a criminal explanation for the presence of classified documents that were found at the Penn Biden Center and the University of Delaware. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| Correct. | ||
| Great. | ||
| And then let's talk about the documents in the president's garage. | ||
| As you noted, a reasonable juror could conclude that the location of the documents surrounded by household junk is not a place where a person knowingly and intentionally stores classified documents that are critical to his legacy. | ||
| Instead, it looks more like a place where a person stores classified documents that he's unaware of. | ||
| That's on page 209 of your report, correct? | ||
| That is something that a reasonable juror could factor into his or her consideration of whether or not the president had criminal, willful intent. | ||
| Great. | ||
| And you also noted that President Biden was allowed to have classified documents in his home for eight years as vice president, and then again when he was president, and that he also had layers of staff who were responsible for assembling, carrying, storing, and retrieving these types of classified documents. | ||
| Correct. | ||
| And because of these facts, you determined it was, quote, entirely possible that the president did not know he still had some of these documents in his home when his vice presidency ended in 2017. | ||
| That's on page 215. | ||
| Bueller. | ||
| Bueller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Entirely possible. | |
| Entirely possible. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So that's the citation. | ||
| I'm going to keep going because my time is running while you're looking. | ||
| So you also cite the president's cooperation with your investigation as evidence that he did not have criminal intent. | ||
| And I want to quote you here because this is important. | ||
| You wrote. | ||
| Most significantly, Mr. Biden self-reported to the government that the Afghanistan documents were in his Delaware garage and consented to the search of his house to retrieve them and other classified materials. | ||
| He also consented to searches of other locations, and later in the investigation, he participated in an interview with our office that lasted more than five hours and provided written answers to most of our written questions. | ||
| Many will conclude that a president who knew he was illegally storing classified documents in his home would not have allowed such a search of his home to discover those documents and then answer the government's questions afterwards. | ||
| Page 210. | ||
| And then you said that you expect this argument about the president's innocence to carry real force for many reasonable jurors. | ||
| Because in your words, Reasonable jurors will conclude that Mr. Biden, a powerful, sophisticated person with access to the best advice in the world, would not have handed the government classified documents from his own home on a silver platter if he had willfully retained those documents for years. | ||
| Just as a person who destroys evidence and lies often proves his guilt, a person who produces evidence and cooperates will seem by many to be innocent. | ||
| Again, page 210. | ||
| As you said in your report, it would be reasonable for a juror to reach that conclusion. | ||
| And that a president advised by counsel would not have informed investigators of the presence of classified documents in his home, or invited agents in the search of every nook and cranny of his home or other residents, or sat for an hours long interview, or answered pages of written questions. | ||
| All going to his full cooperation and his lack of criminal intent. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back. | ||
| General Lady yields back. | ||
| Mr. Hur, we've got three more we're going to do, and then we're going to take votes, and then we'll just have a couple more after that. | ||
| So I'm going to start with the gentleman from Kentucky who is recognized. | ||
| I yield to the chairman. | ||
| I thank the gentleman for yielding. | ||
| Mr. Hur, are you opposed to the U.S. Congress having access to the audio tapes of the people you interviewed during your investigation? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Chairman, I am not in a position to articulate an opinion one way or the other. | |
| That is not really up to me. | ||
| I'm a former employee of the Department of Justice. | ||
| I would refer you to the White House and DOJ leadership. | ||
| You're an accomplished lawyer. | ||
| Is there any reason why we shouldn't? | ||
| Why the United States Congress shouldn't have access to the same information you had access to and that was the basis of your decision? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Chairman, it is not for me to opine on what materials. | |
| Well, the Justice Department released the transcripts the day of the hearing. | ||
| It would have been nice if we had them at a better time for the committee to prepare for our questioning for you. | ||
| They released them today. | ||
| The White House and the Justice Department released them today. | ||
| It would be nice if we actually had the audio tapes, too. | ||
| Again, is there any reason why you can see why the American people and their representatives in the United States Congress should not have access to those tapes? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Chairman, what I can tell you is that my assessment... | |
| That went into my conclusions that I described in my report was based not solely on the transcript. | ||
| It was based on all of the evidence, including the audio recordings. | ||
| Great point. | ||
| That's where I was going. | ||
| So this was valuable evidence for you as the special counsel name to investigate this issue. | ||
| Valuable evidence for you to reach your conclusion and the statements you put in your report. | ||
| And all I'm asking is, shouldn't the United States Congress have access to that same information? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Chairman, again, it is not for me to weigh into what information Congress should or should not have, but what I will tell you is that the audio recordings were part of the evidence, of course, that I considered in coming to my conclusions. | |
| I will yield back to the gentleman from Kentucky and hope we can yield to the gentleman from North Dakota. | ||
| Yield to the gentleman from North Dakota. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mr. Hearn. | |
| Chapter 8 of your report, you detail that Mr. Biden retained in his Delaware basement classified documents relating back to his time as a U.S. senator in the 70s, correct? | ||
| Correct. | ||
| And even more Senate papers dating back to the 70s through 1991 were found in the University of Delaware, Morris Libraries, and in the Biden Senate Papers collection, correct? | ||
| Correct. | ||
| And even more Senate papers dating back to the 1970s and 1980s were found in Biden's Delaware garage. | ||
| I believe that's, yes, that's correct. | ||
| And quote, Mr. Biden had nearly 50 years experience dealing with classified information, including as a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, a member and chairman of the Senate Committee on Judiciary, a member and chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, and vice president of the United States, and that he was deeply familiar with the measures taken to safeguard classified information and the reasons for them, correct? | ||
| That language certainly sounds familiar, Congressman, but if you have a page citation for me, I can... | ||
| And as vice president, is it correct that in 2011, Mr. Biden received advice from his staff about the need to secure classified information in the form of notes? | ||
| Correct. | ||
| Including his first counsel, Cynthia Hogan? | ||
| Correct. | ||
| And he was advised in writing in 2011 by Hogan that classified notes must be obtained in secure safes and stored in secure facilities. | ||
| Correct. | ||
| His second counsel, John McGill, also advised Biden that all of Mr. Biden's records, including his notes, would be sent to the National Archives, and Biden understood and accepted that, correct? | ||
| That's correct, with the exception that Mr. McGill was Vice President Biden's final counsel, not his second one. | ||
| And on his way out, Mr. Biden was also appraised of his obligations by the National Archives staff twice more that his classified notes should be secured in a skiff. | ||
| That particular fact is not immediately coming to mind, Congressman, but if you have a page citation, I can confirm it for you. | ||
| Well, did Mr. Biden have 30 years' experience handling this information? | ||
| He received advice from at least two separate councils, the National Archives staff. | ||
| He has demonstrated enough knowledge of the law to attack President Trump in public over the same exact issue in detail. | ||
| This is where I get into this. | ||
| I just have a problem with this. | ||
| In your report and this testimony, a reasonable person would conclude that Mr. Biden knowingly retained national defense information and failed to deliver it to an appropriate government official, and that he knew his conduct was unlawful. | ||
| And I think that's where we end up here, and that's what the point is. | ||
| Over the last three election cycles, there's only been three people who have ran for president. | ||
| Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Donald Trump. | ||
| All three of them have been accused of mishandling classified documents. | ||
| Only one of them has been prosecuted. | ||
| And that's what the American people see. | ||
| That's what we see. | ||
| We had Hillary Clinton, who ran a program called Bleach It on her server. | ||
| They used hammers to destroy evidence. | ||
| Joe Biden has a 50-year history of misplacing classified documents in numerous different places. | ||
| All of these cases have the same underlying... | ||
| Elements of the crime, the same fact patterns, and yet we only see one person being prosecuted. | ||
| With that, I yield back to the gentleman. | ||
| Great point. | ||
|
unidentified
|
When times expire, I yield back. | |
| Gentleman yields back. | ||
| The ranking members are recognized for unanimous consent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| In light of what the chairman previously said, I ask unanimous consent that all transcribed interviews taken by the committee this year be made public. | ||
| There's an objection to that. | ||
| The gentlelady from Missouri is recognized for five minutes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for being here, Mr. Hur. | |
| St. Louis and I are here today once again to focus on the Oh, God, Cori Bush. | ||
| Complied with the investigation conducted by Special Counsel Herb, who did not find evidence sufficient to warrant criminal charges. | ||
| Despite this outcome, Republicans have used the Special Counsel's report to further their longstanding efforts to re-elect, re-elect, the former white supremacist-in-chief, Donald Trump, who faces 40 criminal charges related to the mishandling of classified documents, including obstruction of justice. | ||
| While President Biden returned all of the classified material and complied with the special counsel's investigation, let's remind ourselves what Donald Trump has said and done. | ||
| He refused to turn over the classified documents in his possession to the National Archives. | ||
| He is on tape, sharing documents he said he could have declassified when he was president. | ||
| He wrongly claimed in an interview that the Presidential Records Act Allows him to do whatever he wants and he was allowed to do everything he did. | ||
| He also said on his right-wing social media platform, quote, I'm allowed to do all of this. | ||
| He continues to admit to his possession of these documents on the campaign trail. | ||
| So this hearing is not a good-faith oversight effort. | ||
| It is just the latest in a long line of dysfunctional and destructive actions taken by this Republican majority. | ||
| They don't care about responsible governance or making people's lives better. | ||
| They don't have an affirmative agenda. | ||
| They are throwing whatever they can at the wall and hoping it sticks. | ||
| And they have zero credibility to talk about mental acuity when they support Donald Trump. | ||
| The same Donald Trump who mixes up Joe Biden and Barack Obama and Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi. | ||
| The same Donald Trump who incorrectly pronounced the words Venezuela, respected and United States. | ||
| The same Donald Trump who calls January 6 defendants hostages and the same Donald Trump who believed bleach injections would treat COVID-19. | ||
| It is deeply hypocritical for anyone who champions this man for the presidency to talk about the mental acuity of anyone else. | ||
| But this is nothing new. | ||
| This has been a consistent pattern of the Republican majority in this Congress. | ||
| The sham impeachment investigation that has completely collapsed to the absurd impeachment of Secretary Mayorkas. | ||
| Republicans have solely focused on destroying the incumbent president, destroying the Democratic Party, destroying progressive movements for social justice, all so that they can re-elect one of the worst presidents of all time. | ||
| Now, it is well known that I have disagreements with President Biden on certain issues. | ||
| My concerns are rooted And the desire to resolve policy matters and help him take better positions that save more lives. | ||
| That's not what Republicans are doing. | ||
| That's not what these investigations and attacks are about. | ||
| They are trying everything they can to turn back the clock on our rights and our freedoms, and we cannot take the bait. | ||
| Let's focus on policy. | ||
| Let's focus on substance. | ||
| Let's focus on saving and improving the lives of our constituents. | ||
| Not misusing the precious time and resources of this committee. | ||
| Not being dishonest just because it serves our political interests. | ||
| We are better than that. | ||
| And our country deserves better than all of this. | ||
| I will continue to reject these absurd distractions from the investments we need in the communities that we represent. | ||
| Let's focus on that. | ||
| Instead of this irresponsible and easily repudiated Republican clown show. | ||
| Thank you and I yield back. | ||
| You are under federal investigation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Special Counsel Herr, thank you for a number of things. | |
| First, thank you for agreeing to testify today. | ||
| Second, thank you also for sharing your family's story at the beginning of your testimony. | ||
| It is an extraordinary story of them coming to America. | ||
| Third, let me also thank you for your in-depth investigation and your detailed report, and generally for your service as special counsel. | ||
| It's not something that I think many people would look for, and certainly comes with a lot of burden, so thank you for your work. | ||
| In your opening statement, you described your investigation as, quote, thorough and independent, and I agree with that. | ||
| One where you attempted to give, quote, rigorous and detailed analysis. | ||
| I also agree with that. | ||
| And one where you say you, quote, must show your work, which we very much appreciate today. | ||
| We don't normally see that. | ||
| Did I recall your opening statement correctly as it relates to those quotes? | ||
| Yes, sir, you do. | ||
| In fact, as part of your investigation, you interviewed about 150 different witnesses. | ||
| You looked at millions of different documents because you wanted to do a thorough investigation. | ||
| Isn't that true? | ||
| Correct. | ||
| And you did this because you took your investigation extremely seriously and you wanted to reach accurate conclusions, correct? | ||
| Very much. | ||
| And let's review some of your specific findings regarding the issues pertaining to competency and mental capacity of President Biden. | ||
| Because as you say, this is very important to whether or not there was criminal willful intent. | ||
| As you can see, I've set forth a number of different quotes up here on this board that I've prepared, some of which I'll read to you. | ||
| Page 5. You say Mr. Biden's quote, Mr. Biden's memory was significantly limited. | ||
| Then again on page 6, you say Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory. | ||
| Then on page 207, you say Mr. Biden's memory also appeared to have significant limitations. | ||
| Then again on page 208, he did not remember when he was vice president, and he did not remember even within several years when his son Beau died. | ||
| You finally make the statement on page 248, quote, for these jurors, Mr. Biden's apparent lapses and failures in February and April 2017 will likely appear consistent with the diminished capacities and faulty memory he showed. | ||
| Those were astounding conclusions to me, and as I look through those quotes, I'd say I hearken back to my time before Congress. | ||
| I was a judge, and one of the things I oversaw was guardianships. | ||
| And frankly, when I read your conclusions, red flags began to go up in my mind because I oversaw hundreds of guardianships back in Texas. | ||
| And as I saw your conclusions, I began to wonder, what does the D.C. statute say about guardianships and how do you define an incapacitated individual in Washington, D.C.? | ||
| And I want to show you this statute because I presume... | ||
| Are you familiar with the statute at all? | ||
| I am not, Congressman. | ||
| So I didn't think that you'd probably review that. | ||
| So let me just read to you some of the definitions here. | ||
| An adult whose ability to receive and evaluate information effectively or to communicate decisions is impaired to such an extent that he or she lacks the capacity to manage all or some of his... | ||
| Financial resources. | ||
| That's the first part of the definition of incapacity, an incapacitated individual under the guardianship statute in the District of Columbia. | ||
| And quite frankly, I see tons of overlap from what you set forth in your testimony, in your written report, and the definition here. | ||
| The phrases are almost identical. | ||
| I would posit that if he cannot manage national top-secret resources, I'm not sure how he can manage his personal financial resources. | ||
| And given your report's findings that his memory was, quote, significantly limited and that he is a person with, quote, diminished faculties and with, quote, faulty memory, it makes me wonder how close he is coming to meeting this definition of an incapacitated individual such that he should have a guardian appointed by the D.C. courts for his personhood. | ||
| There is at least, I believe, a prima facie argument to say that there is substantial evidence. | ||
| And you mentioned it's not just what you've written in the report, but it was the demeanor of President Biden as you interviewed him. | ||
| I'll say in conclusion, whether he does or does not meet this definition, I believe your findings raise significant concerns about his current fitness for the office of the president and certainly his fitness going forward in the future. | ||
| And I appreciate the fact that you were brazen enough to raise this issue. | ||
| In this report, because you knew this would be significant in your findings, but you did so based on a very significant, very detailed, very thorough, independent report. | ||
| And I praise you for that, doing your duty in such a way. | ||
| Thank you, Special Counsel. | ||
| I yield back. | ||
| Gentleman yields back. | ||
| Mr. Hur, we have votes on the floor. | ||
| We have a few more members who will do their five minutes of questioning. | ||
| So we're going to recess. | ||
| All right, ladies and gentlemen. | ||
| I'm going to convene. | ||
| Ten minutes. | ||
| All right, ladies and gentlemen, so we have a lot to review here. | ||
| We couldn't think of a better person to review it with than our favorite legal expert, who has been in many of those hearing rooms, who has been a part of many of these hearings, and who has, quite frankly, been sort of the rock ribs. | ||
| Of any Republican judiciary review in our nation. | ||
| And it seems like there's quite a bit to review here. | ||
| The great Mike Davis joins the program now. | ||
| you you you So, Mike, is Joe Biden senile and dementia riddled and he can't stand trial and doesn't deserve to be president? | ||
| Or... | ||
| Should Joe Biden stand trial for his crimes? | ||
| There seems to be only two red buttons before us, and Democrats have to push one. | ||
| They are profusely sweating, they are shaking, and they can't quite seem to figure out which one it is. | ||
| Well, I think that Biden's special counsel, Robert Herr, is correct that he is a demented man who has a very tough time with his memory. | ||
| But, you know, as we saw at the State of the Union address, if you just load up Biden with some drugs... | ||
| He can get through a speech and, you know, hang out for four hours after as those drugs are working through his system. | ||
| So, okay, you could load Biden up with drugs and then you could, he would stand trial, right? | ||
| I mean, so Democrats seem to be very ungrateful here because Robert Herr seems to have found all of the criminal findings that Joe Biden, all the way back to the Senate stuff, that's what really cued me in. | ||
| Now, you worked in the Senate. | ||
| To be a senator and to take classified documents, you have to walk into the skiff. | ||
| Staffers don't go into the SCIF. | ||
| Only the senators go into the SCIF, the secured vault. | ||
| And then Joe Biden was squirreling out and hoovering away documents from that SCIF as a senator and was using those documents to make cash money. | ||
| He was writing books based on those documents. | ||
| How is that not a crime? | ||
| Well, it is a crime. | ||
| It's clearly the willful retention. | ||
| And disclosure of national security information, national defense information, classified information, which violates the Espionage Act. | ||
| Remember, this was Merrick Garland's decision, Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland's decision to charge President Trump for presidential records that President Trump was allowed to have in the office of former president. | ||
| Guarded by the Secret Service, funded by Congress with federally funded staff and security clearances. | ||
| Garland charged Trump for presidential records Trump was allowed to have under the Presidential Records Act, while Garland did not charge Biden for five stashes of stolen classified records from Biden's time as vice president. | ||
| And as you said, Ben, even as a senator, how can he explain that? | ||
| He would have had to have stuffed classified Documents down his socks or his pants to get them out of the Senate skiff. | ||
| Biden had disclosed classified information to his ghostwriter where he got an $8 million advance for his book. | ||
| This ghostwriter finds out that Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel after the Biden Justice Department got caught secretly colluding with President Biden's personal attorneys. | ||
| For two months to cover up these stolen classified records, the ghostwriter deletes the evidence, obstruction of justice, and not a damn thing happens. | ||
| So they're prosecuting Trump for records he's allowed to have. | ||
| They're not prosecuting Biden for stolen classified records and obstruction. | ||
| So the number one most annoying thing you can do is scream, two tears of justice, two tears of justice, like it's... | ||
| Really pointless in this career, Mike, to just scream about things we all know. | ||
| The sun is hot, the sky is blue, birds fly in the air. | ||
| Like, it's stupid, right? | ||
| So we know that there are two tiers of justice. | ||
| The precedent that's being set here seems to be obviously a horrible one. | ||
| So the DOJ comes after you, and all you do is then feign that you're a forgetful guy, and they say, aw, shucks, too bad, Mike Davis is a forgetful man, he's just old fuddy-duddy Mr. Magoo, and, um... | ||
| You know, he eats the, you know, he opens up a packet of beef jerky and he eats the little white baggies in there, right? | ||
| With the gelatin, you know, he's just dumb. | ||
| He's a dumb guy. | ||
| So then he doesn't get charged. | ||
| This is effectively what the Department of Justice is doing. | ||
| Have you ever seen anything like this? | ||
| I have not. | ||
| I would say to President Biden, don't eat any white baggies laying around the White House because you could have another State of the Union nightmare, so just be careful. | ||
| I would say this, that... | ||
| It's very obvious that the Biden Justice Department has been politicized and weaponized to go after political enemies and protect political friends. | ||
| And it could not be any more clear with Jack Smith charging Trump, Garland charging Trump through Jack Smith, and Garland not charging Biden through Robert Hurt. | ||
| How do you fix something like this? | ||
| I mean, because this just really, it seems like a really, really bad precedent. | ||
| Because what I just heard... | ||
| Listening to the entire last three and a half hours of hearing is Robert Herbing like, this dude, Joe Biden, straight up broke a lot of major laws in America. | ||
| How do you fix it? | ||
| I think you fix it through the American people on November 5th, 2024, when you throw Joe Biden's old demented ass out of the White House, and you put President Trump back in there, and then President Trump... | ||
| Has his acting attorney general appoint special counsels to investigate all this and to investigate real crimes and to reopen these cases and to, for example, charge this ghostwriter with obstruction of justice for deleting these recordings, to charge Biden for these classified materials? | ||
| There needs to be accountability with the Biden administration through the Trump 47 Justice Department. | ||
| So, I mean, that begs a really important question. | ||
| So right here, tell me if I'm wrong here. | ||
| I'm no lawyer nor my legal expert. | ||
| It seems like we have a really thorough report here saying that Joe Biden behaved in a criminal manner. | ||
| Take the name out. | ||
| Like, person whose name, Joe Ryden, this guy, behaved in a criminal manner. | ||
| Just period. | ||
| Just flat on his face, right? | ||
| The Supreme Court is looking at a presidential immunity case right now. | ||
| Is Joe Biden going to get charged? | ||
| For espionage when Donald Trump gets elected again. | ||
| It seems like it's opening itself. | ||
| This seems like they are setting him up, actually, for some real retribution charges here when you get an actual Justice Department in. | ||
| It's not even retribution. | ||
| It would just be following the law. | ||
| I mean, we have Robert Herr coming out and laying out that Joe Biden committed espionage. | ||
| Joe Biden's ghostwriter. | ||
| Obstructed justice by deleting evidence of this espionage after Garland appointed Special Counsel Robert Herr. | ||
| You saw Garland through Robert Herr declining to prosecute his boss, Joe Biden, right? | ||
| This needs to be reinvestigated after Trump wins the White House. | ||
| Would presidential immunity prevent this? | ||
| I don't think you would have presidential immunity. | ||
| For disclosing classified materials as a former vice president, so no. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What about the destruction of the evidence? | ||
| Because it seems like Jim Jordan now, and you work very closely with Jim Jordan and the people who are doing these investigations, Jim Jordan saying, you need to give us all of the documentation and the recordings. | ||
| Some of those recordings were destroyed, as you mentioned. | ||
| That's a charge in and of itself, right? | ||
| I mean, you can't do that. | ||
| No, I mean, the ghostwriter destroyed his recordings where then-former Vice President Joe Biden is knowingly disclosing classified information to his ghostwriter after Joe Biden got this $8 million advance to write this book. | ||
| That is clearly a violation of the Espionage Act. | ||
| And then when this ghostwriter found out that Herr was investigating this, he deleted the evidence. | ||
| He deleted this recording. | ||
| Of Joe Biden committing espionage. | ||
| So that's obstruction of justice. | ||
| You know, Joe Biden, according to Robert Herr, is this lovable, demented man who apparently can't stand trial, but he can be the President of the United States. | ||
| How does Robert Herr explain not charging the ghostwriter? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, perhaps that's a question for you, Mike, because the real question here is, what's going on, actually? | ||
| Because for three and a half hours, a dude was just like, these guys all behaved criminally, I'm not going to charge them. | ||
| What's going on here? | ||
| It's what I've been predicting all along since Merrick Garland picked Robert Hur. | ||
| Robert Hur worked for Rod Rosenstein, Chris Wray, James Comey, that whole cabal of Republicans who hate Donald Trump. | ||
| So, have any of the Democrat arguments convinced you? | ||
| You know, there's a guy on there, Hank Johnson, he thinks that Guam will tip over if there's too many people on it. | ||
| Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell, have any of the arguments from Cori Bush? | ||
| Have they convinced you? | ||
| Cori Bush called Donald Trump the white supremacist in chief in her screed that she just screamed. | ||
| Well, she herself is under investigation by the DOJ, which is really quite remarkable that you can be under investigation by the DOJ and then go out and start asking questions of the special prosecutor. | ||
| Any major takeaways from the Democrat side of the dais? | ||
| I mean, I think that Cori Bush was particularly, you know, enlightening because she's just such a brilliant woman and she says such brilliant things all the time. | ||
| Of course not, Ben. | ||
| I mean, these people are total buffoons. | ||
| They're partisan clowns. | ||
| And today's hearing went as expected, where Robert Herr tried to justify protecting Joe Biden and Joe Biden's ghostwriter for obvious espionage and obvious obstruction of justice. | ||
| So Merrick Garland's protecting Biden while Merrick Garland is sicking Jack Smith, this political scud missile, after President Trump. | ||
| So, final takeaways here, how does Trump fix this DOJ? | ||
| Because this really does seem, this seems like the end result, right, of the broken system. | ||
| We continue to pull the slot machine, we continue to see how broken everything is, right? | ||
| So how's it fixed? | ||
| There's so much rot at the Justice Department, and it's from these... | ||
| Career leftists who have these key jobs in the Department of Justice, including the FBI. | ||
| So when President Trump gets back into office after January 20th, 2025, he needs to make all of these senior career officials in the main justice, the chiefs and the assistant chiefs of all the litigating divisions, along with the FBI director. | ||
| The deputy director and all of the assistant directors, including the assistant directors in charge of the key field offices like Washington and New York, along with the assistant U.S. attorneys and these key offices like Washington, D.C. and the Southern District of New York and the Eastern District of Virginia, they all need to reapply for their jobs. | ||
| And in the meantime, they all need to be reassigned to border cases to enforce our border. | ||
| And maybe they can help change diapers. | ||
| Well, Joe Biden's not around anymore. | ||
| They don't need to help change diapers. | ||
| And it's really easy to shove documents down your pants when you are wearing a diaper, Mike. | ||
| You didn't even think about that. | ||
| Well, I mean, the last time I wore a diaper, I agree. | ||
| When I was in the Senate, Skip, five years ago, I just didn't have diapers, so I couldn't steal documents. | ||
| Yes, yes, yes, that's right, Mike. | ||
| It does seem as though, actually, you've been serving in the Senate since you were a wee baby. | ||
| You know, obviously, how the system works. | ||
| You are the most effective at delivering true change and in delivering a 9-0 Supreme Court ruling in favor of Donald Trump and in favor of the rule of law. | ||
| We're thankful for your work. | ||
| If you wish to support Mike, you've got to go to the Article 3 project. | ||
| You've got to go to the Article 3 project and then also follow Mike Davis on X. Mike, what are you working on right now? | ||
| There's a lot going on. | ||
| We are constantly Defending President Trump, his top aides, his lawyers, January 6th, protesters who were being persecuted by the Biden Justice Department. | ||
| Parents who are being targeted by the Biden Justice Department for being outraged by gender chaos and the resulting rape in high school bathrooms. | ||
| We're protecting Christians who are being targeted under the FACE Act, while Biden gives amnesty to BLM and Antifa and Hamas and abortion industry activists who are terrorizing America. | ||
| We need to fix... | ||
| This broken justice system. | ||
| And the only way that's going to happen is putting President Trump back in the White House after November 5th, 2024. | ||
| Can we click on Mike's new avatar? | ||
| I didn't know this. | ||
| I didn't know Mike had a new avatar. | ||
| So it's Mike smoking a joint or a Marlboro Red. | ||
| Not sure. | ||
| I know he lives in a tough neighborhood, so he probably can get access to both. | ||
| And wearing a MAGA hat. | ||
| And has on a pair of Joe Biden aviators. | ||
| But the aviators, they're closed. | ||
| So you're wearing them in a very special way. | ||
| And I think that's pretty badass. | ||
| I've never seen anyone wear glasses like that, Mike. | ||
| Thank you, Ben. | ||
| I have to give credit to Natalie Winters on Steve Bannon's War Room for coming up with this new avatar. | ||
| Okay, great. | ||
| My team of graphic designers will send you an alternate version where the glasses are open and you're not just wearing them on the ridge of your nose. | ||
| But hey, ladies and gentlemen, the man can do anything and the man can wear aviators however he wants. | ||
| I'm not going to make another diaper joke, Mike. | ||
| I won't do it. | ||
| I won't do it. | ||
| This is a classy show. | ||
| This is an adult show. | ||
| We're not going to do it. | ||
| God bless you, Mike. | ||
| Thank you for your work. | ||
| Thank you, Ben. | ||
|
unidentified
|
*intro music* | |
| More diaper jokes. | ||
| No more. | ||
| No more diaper jokes, ladies and gentlemen. | ||
| It would be easy for Joe Biden to take all the classified documents and shove them right down the front of his diaper. | ||
| So, ladies and gentlemen, we've been live for nearly... | ||
| Oh, yeah, for more than four hours here. | ||
| It is our job. | ||
| We endeavor for me to just shut my mouth and let you listen to the news. | ||
| There are very few people that are going to actually allow... | ||
| For these hearings to be heard in total. | ||
| We've been doing this with Fannie Willis hearings. | ||
| We've been doing this, obviously, with Joe Biden, Donald Trump speeches, and so forth. | ||
| We are reaching a moment in time when the powers that control media are literally cutting off Donald Trump and Joe Biden. | ||
| They don't want you to hear from Trump for one reason, and they don't want to hear from Joe Biden for another reason. | ||
| And so they literally censor them. | ||
| And don't play their clips live because they don't believe you're smart enough. | ||
| They don't believe that you're competent enough. | ||
| They don't believe that you have a high enough IQ. | ||
| And we reject that as a company. | ||
| And so we do these lives. | ||
| We carry these things. | ||
| It's hard for us to swallow our tongue. | ||
| We try not to talk too much. | ||
| It's hard for us to not talk. | ||
| But we let you listen. | ||
| We put the comments on screen. | ||
| We have a conversation. | ||
| We have a discussion. | ||
| And we know... | ||
| Ladies and gentlemen, we have confidence in this audience that you are brilliant, that you are able to decide exactly what this Republican is about. | ||
| So let me, like, just line this up really quickly here as to what we heard over the last three and a half hours, okay? | ||
| Ladies and gentlemen, Robert Herr, in his opening statement, Joe Biden's a criminal. | ||
| Here we go. | ||
| Go. | ||
|
unidentified
|
My team and I conducted a thorough, independent investigation. | |
| We identified evidence that the president willfully retained classified materials after the end of his vice presidency when he was a private citizen. | ||
| This evidence included an audio-recorded conversation during which Mr. Biden told his ghostwriter that he had, quote, just found all the classified stuff downstairs, end quote. | ||
| When Mr. Biden said this, he was a private citizen speaking to his ghostwriter in his private rental home in Virginia. | ||
| So, Joe Biden's a criminal. | ||
| This is him saying, yes, Joe Biden not only knew he had classified documents, Joe Biden kept them all over the place. | ||
| Here we go. | ||
| Where did Joe Biden keep his classified documents? | ||
| How much time he got? | ||
| It's actually not that long of a clip, but it's a great one. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go. | |
| Mr. Herr, classified documents were found at the Penn Biden Center? | ||
| That's correct. | ||
| They were found in President Biden's garage? | ||
| In Wilmington, Delaware, yes. | ||
| And in his basement den? | ||
| Also in the same home, yes. | ||
| And his main floor office? | ||
| Correct. | ||
| And his third floor den? | ||
| Correct. | ||
| At the University of Delaware? | ||
| Correct. | ||
| And at the Biden Institute? | ||
| Correct. | ||
| Okay, so when Joe Biden says that he didn't keep classified documents, he did. | ||
| When Joe Biden said he didn't keep classified documents, he did keep them all over the place. | ||
| And when Joe Biden said he didn't keep classified documents, is that a lie, Mr. Herr? | ||
| Let's go. | ||
| February 8th, the White House question, Mr. President, why did you share classified information with your ghostwriter? | ||
| The President, I did not share classified information. | ||
| I did not share it. | ||
| I guarantee I did not. | ||
| That's not true, is it, Mr. Herr? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That is inconsistent with the findings based on the evidence in my report. | |
| Yes, it's a lie. | ||
| It's just what regular people would say, right? | ||
| Yeah, all right. | ||
| So the next one. | ||
| And all the stuff that was in my home. | ||
| It was in filing cabinets that were either locked or able to be locked. | ||
| That wasn't true either, was it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That was inconsistent with the findings of our investigation. | |
| Another lie, people might say, right? | ||
| Because what you put in your report was, among the places Mr. Biden's lawyers found classified documents in the garage was a damaged open box. | ||
| So here's what I'm understanding, right? | ||
| As Mr. Armstrong laid out... | ||
| You find in your report that the elements of a federal criminal violation are met. | ||
| But then you apply this senile cooperator theory that because Joe Biden cooperated and the elevator doesn't go to the top floor, you don't think you get a conviction. | ||
| So Matt Gaetz's questioning, I think, was really, really good. | ||
| But he got Robert Hurd to say, those are not consistent with the findings of the report. | ||
| That's DOJ way of saying lie. | ||
| Lie. | ||
| This is what he was saying. | ||
| This is a lie. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Be able to speak Bidenese. | ||
| It's a lie. | ||
| It's inconsistent with the finding the report. | ||
| No, he lied. | ||
| Joe Biden's lying to you. | ||
| And also Joe Biden pressured the Department of Justice and Robert Herr to lie to the American people. | ||
| We just found that out. | ||
| This is breaking news. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So is it correct on that February 5th letter that was sent to you asking you to change? | |
| References to the President's poor memory? | ||
| Wasn't there a request by the White House to do that? | ||
| There was a request, yes. | ||
| And, Mr. Chairman, I think the record should show that the gentleman from Maryland earlier said that that was not the case. | ||
| I think he said, nor did he seek to redact a single word of Herr's report. | ||
| Obviously, Mr. Herr is telling us differently here. | ||
| And didn't the White House then go to the Attorney General himself and say that he would like to see changes to the references The White House counsel did send such a letter. | ||
| I love Tom Tiffany. | ||
| He's like the Ned Flanders of Congress. | ||
| He's like such a nice, portly Wisconsinian. | ||
| Is that the right way to say that? | ||
| I assume so. | ||
| But he asked great questions and skewering questions, and there just revealed that the Joe Biden White House is interfering in justice and is pressuring the Justice Department to not release the stuff about Joe Biden being effectively mentally deranged. | ||
| I wanted to show you this, ladies and gentlemen, because Cori Bush is under investigation for hiring her husband. | ||
| So, why do they allow people who are under federal investigation to ask questions about federal investigations? | ||
| I don't know! | ||
| Don't know! | ||
| Do that murderers sit on murder trial juries? | ||
| I'm not sure. | ||
| Let's roll through exactly what the report found before we get to the Democrat defenses of it, because that's something we didn't have time to do when we began this morning, because they were right on time for these hearings. | ||
| Kind of weird how mean Democrats are being to her, given the fact that their leader got away with mishandling classified info for financial gain. | ||
| As his department is breaking all precedent and norms to go after their top political opponent. | ||
| They are ungrateful. | ||
| Ungrateful people. | ||
| That's exactly right, because that's exactly what Robert Hurt did here. | ||
| Holy smokes, here's the report. | ||
| Biden couldn't remember the year his son died or when Trump was elected. | ||
| This guy has the nuclear code. | ||
| That's exactly right. | ||
| Okay, here we go. | ||
| 2015. | ||
| 2015. | ||
| President Biden. | ||
| Was it 2015 he died? | ||
| It was May of 2015. | ||
| President Biden, it was 2015. | ||
| I'm not sure the month, sir, but I think it was the year. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| That's what happened. | ||
| So this whole, like, this whole, like, Joe Biden did remember. | ||
| Nope, he didn't. | ||
| Not only did Joe Biden forget the year his son died, he also, during his interview with Robert Herr, said that Beau was alive in 2017 and 2018, and he was at Penn. | ||
| Beau died in 2015. | ||
| He never taught a class at Penn. | ||
| He also forgot the year Trump was elected president. | ||
| Here they are in the document. | ||
| Well, um, I, I, I, I, I, I don't know. | ||
| That is what? | ||
| 2017, 2018 in that area? | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| Uh-huh. | ||
| Remember, in this time frame, my son either been deployed or is dying. | ||
| Uh, okay. | ||
| No, your son was already dead. | ||
| We've said it many times. | ||
| It's a tragedy. | ||
| Couldn't imagine the pain you go through when your child dies. | ||
| But Joe Biden regularly lies about his child dying, saying that he died in Iraq, which is stolen valor. | ||
| And evil and wrong, and you use your children's death for political purposes, suddenly I don't feel bad for you. | ||
| Do you know what I mean? | ||
| Like, you're using your son's death. | ||
| It's like, can you think of a more cretinous, grievous thing to do? | ||
| But here we are. | ||
| Our president has the same kind of conversations, special counsel, that my son did with me when he was four. | ||
| So the special counsel is trying to ask Biden a serious question here. | ||
| And Biden goes, by the way, you know how it works? | ||
| It's really cool. | ||
| Sir, I'd love to hear much more about it, talking about electric cars, but I gotta get more questions through. | ||
| You step your foot on the accelerator, and you get it down to six or seven grand, and then all of a sudden, you say launch, and you take your foot off the brake. | ||
| Then Joe Biden makes a car sound. | ||
| Biden makes a car sound. | ||
| Vroom, vroom, vroom. | ||
| Ha ha ha ha ha. | ||
| This is the resident of the White House. | ||
| And then Robert Herr has to be like, okay, please, let's go back to the question. | ||
| So Robert Hur's like, did you keep classified documents? | ||
| Did you steal classified documents? | ||
| And Biden's like, cars go vroom, vroom, fast, fast, crash, crash. | ||
| Ha ha ha. | ||
| This is from corporate media reporters for Axios. | ||
| My write-up on the Biden transcript. | ||
| Biden repeatedly asked for help remembering important dates with lawyers stepping in. | ||
| In 2009, am I still vice president? | ||
| This is a question. | ||
| In 2009, am I still the vice president? | ||
| Trump gets elected in November of 2017? | ||
| Uh, no! | ||
| You dumb jackass! | ||
| Bro, says Raheem. | ||
| Check this out. | ||
| This is really important stuff. | ||
| Sorry we didn't get a chance to, like, get here, but, like, we've done our research, and it's really important for you to see this stuff. | ||
| This is, like, from inside of the HUR report. | ||
| This is the actual transcript, okay? | ||
| During this time when you were living in the Chain Bridge Road... | ||
| There were documents related to the Biden Center, the Biden Institute, cancer moonshot, blah, blah, blah, that you were actively working on. | ||
| President Biden, I, I, I, I, I, I don't know. | ||
| 2017, 2018 in that area. | ||
| I remember this time frame. | ||
| My son was either deployed or dying. | ||
| By the way, there were still a lot of people. | ||
| Dude, your son wasn't deployed or dying. | ||
| Your son died in 2015. | ||
| Was that 2015 he had died? | ||
| Yes, it was May of 2015. | ||
| This is like so sad. | ||
| It's like incredibly sad. | ||
| And what happened in the meantime? | ||
| Is it that Trump gets elected in November 2017? | ||
| 2016? | ||
| When did Trump get elected? | ||
| 2017 or 2016? | ||
| Shut up! | ||
| Like his lawyers are like grabbing him and shaking him and shoving applesauce down his throat. | ||
| Flipping him over, changing his diaper, putting powder on his white fanny. | ||
| What? | ||
| That's when you left office in January 2017. | ||
| Oh, yeah, okay. | ||
| But that's when Trump was sworn in in January. | ||
| Okay, got it. | ||
| Dude's gone. | ||
| The dude is gone, people. | ||
| He's gone. | ||
| Julie Kelly saying, just a reminder, in recent filing by Special Counsel Jack Smith in Trump's classified document case, there's no question Biden is guilty of the same. | ||
| Further, his intent in keeping the papers to profit from a book deal is evident. | ||
| This is what they're bringing against Donald Trump. | ||
| Unauthorized possession of a document. | ||
| Related to national defense. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| Well, that's exactly what... | ||
| Joe Biden did. | ||
| The much-discussed portion of Robert Hur's interview with Joe Biden on the misstatements, Biden stumbles on the year Trump was elected when his son died. | ||
| He accurately mentions Obama not wanting him to run for president, and yes, he does search for the year his son Bo died. | ||
| So Donald Trump's response to all this, Donald Trump has posted one response to all this so far. | ||
| Big day in Congress for the Biden documents hoax! | ||
| He had many times more documents, including classified documents, than I or any other president had. | ||
| He had them all over the place with zero supervision or security. | ||
| He did not come out of the Presidential Records Act, as I do. | ||
| And he had many docs in Chinatown. | ||
| Donald Trump, the classic, all caps, Chinatown. | ||
| Can you hear it? | ||
| China. | ||
| I just mentioned the way he said China. | ||
| And they were moved all over the place, heavily used. | ||
| My boxes were moved by GSA, secure. | ||
| Most carried clothing, shoes, sports equipment, and kitchen stuffed newspapers, pictures, magazines award the DOJ gave Biden and virtually every other person and president a free pass. | ||
| Me, I'm still fighting. | ||
| MAGA. | ||
| Donald Trump posting. | ||
| Ooh, man. | ||
| Okay, so let's move on. | ||
| How do you defend that as a Democrat? | ||
| You're in a tough position. | ||
| Here's what the Democrats did. | ||
| They literally screamed lies about Joe Biden. | ||
| They screamed whenever you criticize Joe Biden. | ||
| Or they screamed about Donald Trump. | ||
| That's the two-pronged way that they advanced towards Some level of scrutinizing Robert Herr here, I guess. | ||
| Robert Herr is no hero. | ||
| No her-o. | ||
| But, um, yeah. | ||
| Didn't go great for Democrats. | ||
| Premier Jayapal. | ||
| Biden is 100% innocent. | ||
| You exonerated him with your report. | ||
| Uh, no. | ||
| We didn't exonerate him. | ||
| Here's that exchange, ladies and gentlemen. | ||
| Jayapal meltdown. | ||
| So this lengthy, expensive, and independent investigation resulted in a complete exoneration of President Joe Biden. | ||
| For every document you discussed in your report, you found insufficient evidence that the President violated any laws about possession or retention of classified materials. | ||
| The primary law that you analyzed for potential prosecution was part of the Espionage Act, 18 U.S.C. | ||
| 793-E, which criminalizes willful retention or disclosure of national defense information. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Congressman, that is one statute that we analyzed. | |
| I need to go back and make sure that I take note of the word that you used, exoneration. | ||
| Mr. Herr, I'm going to continue with my questions. | ||
| I'm going to continue with my questions. | ||
| I know that the term... | ||
|
unidentified
|
I know that the term... | |
| You exonerated that. | ||
| I know that the term willful retention has... | ||
| Mr. Herr, it's my time. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Are you ever in an argument and somebody just keeps screaming, I know you are, but what am I? | ||
| I know you are, but what am I? | ||
| Or at the very least is like just trying to just trying to yell over you, trying to scream falsehoods. | ||
| Premier Jayapal, she is a communist, right? | ||
| She's literally part of the socialist wing of the Democrat Party. | ||
| And it's really great. | ||
| She's acting very much like a Stalinist did during the Stalinist trials. | ||
| You should look it up. | ||
| The Stalinist trials went very much like the way the Democrat side of Congress asked questions. | ||
| Here, ladies and gentlemen, here's Jerry Nadler, fresh off of saying that if we don't have open borders, we won't have people to pick our vegetables. | ||
| An exact quote. | ||
| A vegetable himself, somebody who's, well, at the very least, shaped like a vegetable. | ||
| I don't know exactly what kind of vegetable, a beet or a kumquat or something like that. | ||
| Jerry Nadler, a man who's probably never eaten a vegetable in his life, saying... | ||
| Did Biden lie in your investigation? | ||
| Why do you keep asking these questions? | ||
| You know you're going to get destroyed. | ||
| Let's go. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because they were concerned that Trump had lied about possession of those documents and might conceal or destroy them. | |
| Special Counsel Smith found that President Trump obstructed his investigation by suggesting that his attorney falsely represent to the FBI and grand jury that Trump did not have the documents called for by the grand jury subpoena. | ||
| At any point in your investigation, Did you have any reason to believe that President Biden lied to you? | ||
| I do address in my report one response the President gave to a question that we had posed to him that we deemed to be not credible. | ||
| Was it clear he didn't lie? | ||
| I'm sorry, Congressman. | ||
| The report is clear that he didn't lie or that he caused his staff to lie to you and that he didn't cause his staff to lie to you. | ||
| Your report is clear on that. | ||
| Do you agree that causing someone to lie to the FBI is a classic example of obstruction of justice? | ||
| So, did Joe Biden lie? | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Shut up! | ||
| It's my time! | ||
| You exonerated Joe Biden. | ||
| No, I didn't. | ||
| Shut up! | ||
| It's my time! | ||
| It gets worse. | ||
| Because Steve Cohen from Tennessee, who is just one of my absolute favorite members of Congress, he's just so absolutely bat bleep crazy. | ||
| Steve Cohen. | ||
| Decided to go on an unhinged rant about how cogent Joe Biden is and how high IQ he is, how smart Joe Biden is, and ended up delivering one of the greatest cell phones ever. | ||
| I really hope this clip goes to the very, very end, where Steve Cohen decides he is going to have his own brain aneurysm and his own senior moment and stops being able to make English words, which is really fun. | ||
| He gets himself so worked up about how smart Joe Biden is and how cognitively with it it is. | ||
| That Steve Cohen actually breaks his own brain, because I think Steve Cohen's, like, really old, too, and, like, proves that he himself is senile, along with Joe Biden. | ||
| Great job, guys. | ||
| Let's go. | ||
| It appears to me, and I think it would appear to the American public, that these minor discrepancies, as far as dates and after a long period of time... | ||
| Congressman, my reasons for my declination decision are set out in my report, and I stand by the words in the report, sir. | ||
| Well, thank you, and I think I'm encompassing them in my... | ||
| What I'm saying to you is that it was not anything to do with his memory why he wasn't chosen to be—you chose not to indict him. | ||
| It was the difference in the facts in the case and how he dealt with it. | ||
| The fact is, Mr. Biden sat through five hours, and he did an admirable job, and he did an outstanding job in the State of the Union laying out the case for the future of America, for the middle class, for democracy around the world, for standing up to the Russians. | ||
| Not bending down to them. | ||
| That's what's important. | ||
| Not if you can be like on the $64,000 question, assuming it was legit, and answering every single question correctly. | ||
| That's not what you need to be president. | ||
| To be president, you need to have values. | ||
| You need to have an understanding of what values America has and needs to maintain to keep the world safe and peaceful. | ||
| That's dealing with Ukraine. | ||
| That's dealing with difficult people like Netanyahu in Israel to try to get something done that's correct. | ||
| What Joe Biden does in understanding Social Security and Medicaid are important institutions that help seniors, not senile people. | ||
| I mean, I really object to that comment. | ||
| Nobody suggests he's senile, and that's disrespectful of senior people with any kind of memory disability. | ||
| Lots of seniors have memory disability, but they're not senile. | ||
| And to do such, we're shameful. | ||
| Joe Biden is a competent, good president who knows American values. | ||
| The gentleman's time has expired. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The gentleman's time has expired. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Don't bite me! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Don't bite me! | |
| Loud noises! | ||
| Yeah, it is real. | ||
| The loud noises meme, right? | ||
| They have brick, loud noises from Anchorman. | ||
| Well, ladies and gentlemen, we have no hearing problems with Jamie Raskin, who decided to scream his way through his meltdown of a speech. | ||
| Again, Democrats aren't doing great here. | ||
| Not doing great. | ||
| The line of questionings from Democrats really lacked major substance. | ||
| Here we go. | ||
| My friends, this is a memory test. | ||
| But it's not a memory test for President Biden. | ||
| It's a memory test for all of America. | ||
| Do we remember fascism? | ||
| Do we remember Nazism? | ||
| Do we remember communism and totalitarianism? | ||
| Have we completely forgotten the sacrifices of our parents and grandparents in prior generations? | ||
| Well, we play pin the tail on the donkey in this wild goose chase. | ||
| All of these silly games, Donald Trump entertains authoritarian hustler Victor Orban at Mar-a-Lago for the weekend, and Orban comes out to declare that if we indeed sleepwalk into another Trump presidency, Trump will, quote, not give a single penny to Ukraine. | ||
| That's what all of this is about. | ||
| It's about trying to pull the wool over the eyes of America. | ||
| Because the tyrants and dictators of the world are on the march today. | ||
| So who wins with this ludicrous, embarrassing spectacle? | ||
| Orban wins. | ||
| Putin wins. | ||
| She wins. | ||
| The tyrants of the world win. | ||
| They have one more reason to celebrate Donald Trump and his cult followers, who've completely lost their way. | ||
| They're looking for high crimes and misdemeanors. | ||
| Now they appoint themselves amateur memory specialists, and that's what they pounce on the President of the United States about. | ||
| America faces a choice between democracy and tyranny. | ||
| And the president laid it out at Valley Forge, and he laid it out in the State of the Union. | ||
| Will America stand on the side of people struggling against fascist aggression? | ||
| Will we stand with the people of Ukraine against Vladimir Putin, whose filthy war has meant the kidnapping of thousands of Ukrainian children, the murder, the slaughter of thousands of Ukrainian civilians? | ||
| And the attack on an independent sovereign democracy. | ||
| But we're not working on that today. | ||
| We're not standing up for democracy and human rights and international law around the world. | ||
| No, we're trying to play memory detectives to parse the language of a president who the whole world got to see at the State of the Union address, directly address the real questions of our time. | ||
| And it is democracy versus dictatorship. | ||
| And all of the autocrats and the theocrats, all of the kleptocrats of the world are together in league against American democracy. | ||
| And we have to stand up for American democracy against these stupid games. | ||
| I yield back, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| All of the acrobats and Democrats and crap craps have to stand up. | ||
| To the rats, the rat skin that I have for my toupee. | ||
| That is why they call me Jamie Ratskin, ladies and gentlemen. | ||
| Got him. | ||
| Got him. | ||
| Loud night, lad! | ||
| This is what I was looking for. | ||
| Loud night, lad! | ||
| This was the Democrats' rebuttal to Robert Herr. | ||
| Robert Herr's no hero. | ||
| If Robert Herr was a her-o, he would have charged Joe Biden for his crimes. | ||
| Instead of making up this novel, strange legal theory, as Matt Gaetz talked about in the clip earlier, that he's just senile, so we're not going to charge him. | ||
| That's not your job, actually. | ||
| A doctor determines whether he's senile. | ||
| You don't determine whether he's senile. | ||
| Robert Herr, we brought in two experts here, Mike Davis and Brett Tolman, to both tell us what they thought, and they were both like, listen. | ||
| Robert Hur was told to come to this conclusion by this politically weaponized DOJ. | ||
| We know that's what's happening here, and here's how we change it. | ||
| This is the conversation we need to move into. | ||
| It's pointless to, like, stand and scream at the sky and be like, there are two thumbs of justice. | ||
| Nope, nope, nope. | ||
| We must win first, messaging, winning, hearts and minds, exposing what these people are doing, and then, ladies and gentlemen, then we change the system when we are in charge of the system. | ||
| That's how. | ||
| That's how change always happens. | ||
| That's how change will forever work. | ||
| And so we need to build a movement and we need to win. | ||
| We are very, very thankful for our final clip here. | ||
| Cori Bush. | ||
| Cori Bush is a congresswoman from St. Louis. | ||
| St. Louis is doing worse than, I don't know, like the eastern front of Ukraine when it comes to like how secure the city is. | ||
| Like the city has effectively descended into a... | ||
| Gotham-style chaos. | ||
| Every horrific video. | ||
| Videos we would never dream of showing you on this show because we'd get canceled immediately. | ||
| The channel would be taken down because they're so gruesome and horrifying. | ||
| You're like, oh wow, is that clip from Haiti that's descended into third world anarchy? | ||
| Nope, it's from St. Louis. | ||
| St. Louis is like the highest. | ||
| You should check the murder rates of Cori Bush's district. | ||
| Cori Bush is going to sit there and blabber about delivering for her constituents. | ||
| Cori Bush is under federal investigation for money laundering to her spout. | ||
| Isn't it amazing how this all works? | ||
| It's like Fannie Willis. | ||
| It's like the exact same Fannie Willis operation. | ||
| She just money laundered taxpayer dollars to her husband. | ||
| And they got rich off it. | ||
| So she's now under DOJ investigation for that. | ||
| Yet she's allowed to critique the special counsel. | ||
| She's allowed to critique the DOJ. | ||
| At the very least, that should be like the threshold. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| If you banged a Chinese spy, if you lied under oath, Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell, if you are under investigation by the DOJ, Cori Bush, then maybe you shouldn't be allowed to go after the special counsel. | ||
| Who, again, is no hero here. | ||
| But nonetheless, here we go. | ||
| The salt that live of the day, ladies and gentlemen, Cori Bush, very salty person, Cori Bush. | ||
| Maybe she'll be charged by the DOJ. | ||
| Who knows? | ||
| She's been charged by the DOJ. | ||
| Maybe she'll go to jail. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I'm not sure. | ||
| She's broken a bunch of laws. | ||
| She went on a screaming, seething rampage, calling Donald Trump the white supremacist in chief. | ||
| Oh, wow. | ||
| You gotta get better. | ||
| She must have Jimmy Kimmel's writers. | ||
| I mean, you gotta get... | ||
| Come on, people. | ||
| You gotta get better content. | ||
| Like, seriously? | ||
| You're willing to trot out the 2017? | ||
| The 2017 lines? | ||
| Not even the 2016? | ||
| Spring of 2016 lines? | ||
| Like, you haven't written anything new in a decade? | ||
| Okay. | ||
| All right, Cori Bush doesn't like Donald Trump because of the color of his skin. | ||
| Orange man, bad. | ||
| Salt that lid. | ||
| Here we go. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And thank you for being here, Mr. Hurd. | |
| St. Louis and I are here today once again to focus on the real issues that affect our communities instead of partisan hit jobs. | ||
| Let me start by saying that the potential mishandling of classified information is a serious issue, and I believe it was appropriate for the Attorney General to appoint both special counsels in the Biden and Trump cases. | ||
| As my colleagues have pointed out, President Biden fully complied with the investigation conducted by Special Counsel Herr, who did not find evidence sufficient to warrant criminal charges. | ||
| Despite this outcome, Republicans have used the Special Counsel's report to further their longstanding efforts to re-elect. | ||
| Re-elect the former white supremacist-in-chief, Donald Trump, who faces 40 criminal charges related to the mishandling of classified documents, including obstruction of justice. | ||
| Oh, I am so smart. | ||
| I need to read every single little thing that is said to me, that is written down by my counsel. | ||
| I will read every single word. | ||
| I am so smart. | ||
| Ladies and gentlemen, the hearing is back up. | ||
| You know, we're just, you know, this is like the goal of today's show, to show you the hearing. | ||
| So it looks like we have another Democrat talking about Donald Trump and Joe Biden. | ||
| Here's Robert Herr again. | ||
| There were a couple more people that they were going to get to, and then they're going to have closing statements. | ||
| So, ladies and gentlemen, let's go. | ||
| We're live. | ||
| Yield to the chairman. | ||
| I think, gentlemen, for yielding, I'm just pointing out Mr. Ivey raised the issue of transcripts. | ||
| He has complete access to every transcript that we have done in the congressional investigation. | ||
| He can go, he could show up for all the depositions. | ||
| Like, frankly, I show up for most of those. | ||
| So he has complete access to that. | ||
| What we don't have. | ||
| Is access to the transcripts of all the witnesses. | ||
| We only have Mr. Biden, and we don't have access to the audio tapes of all the witnesses. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Will the gentleman yield? | |
| It's not my time. | ||
| I yield back to the gentleman from Virginia. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You're speaking, but it's not your time? | |
| It's my time. | ||
| I thank the gentleman. | ||
| Special Counsel Hur, thank you for being here. | ||
| Your story is an impressive one. | ||
| Your achievements are impressive as well. | ||
| You've been a prosecutor for many years, correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, sir. | |
| I was not a prosecutor for more than a couple of years, but I still remember my record in jury trials. | ||
| Do you remember your record? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It'll take me a little time to reconstruct, but I think I could get there. | |
| Is it above 500? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It is above 500, yes, sir. | |
| Okay. | ||
| Well, I'm curious because the evidence that you outlined in your report is pretty significant. | ||
| When it comes to evidence that after his vice presidency, and I'm reading from your report, Mr. Biden willfully retained marked classified documents about Afghanistan and unmarked classified handwritten notes in his notebooks, both of which he stored in unsecured places in his home. | ||
| Further, you noted that there's evidence that he willfully retained the classified Afghanistan documents, including the Thanksgiving memo, and had a strong motive to keep such classified documents. | ||
| You outline what that motive is. | ||
| Can you tell me? | ||
| What is the motive for keeping the Thanksgiving Day memo? | ||
|
unidentified
|
One of the motives that we addressed in the report was that the issue of whether or not a troop surge should be sent to Afghanistan in 2009 was a hotly contested and debated issue within the Obama administration back in 2009, and one in which then-Vice President Biden had a significant role and he felt very strongly about. | |
| I'm going to quote from your report. | ||
| President Biden believed President Obama's 2009 troop surge was a mistake on par with Vietnam and wanted the record to show that he was right about Afghanistan, that his critics were wrong, and that he had opposed President Obama's mistaken decision forcefully when it was made, that his judgment was sound when it mattered most. | ||
| Does that sound correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That language sounds familiar from the report, yes. | |
| Okay. | ||
| That is... | ||
| Pretty significant in terms of a motivating factor for retaining those documents, wouldn't you say? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That would be a factor that a jury would assess in considering whether or not Mr. Biden had criminal intent. | |
| And I also know that President Biden was working with a ghostwriter on a book, Mark Zwaneker, correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Correct. | |
| And your investigation concluded when... | ||
| President Biden began work on his memoir, correct? | ||
| At what time did your investigation conclude? | ||
|
unidentified
|
With respect to the second book published in 2017, we identified evidence that Mr. Biden began recorded conversations with Mr. Zwanitzer in 2016 before the end of Mr. Biden's vice presidency. | |
| And it's your understanding that while Mr. Zwanitzer interviewed President Biden, he read classified information from his notebooks nearly verbatim, sometimes for an hour or more at a time, correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Correct. | |
| And was Mr. Zwanter authorized to receive this classified information? | ||
|
unidentified
|
He was not. | |
| And in fact, in their February 16th meeting, which has been alluded to earlier, isn't it true that President Biden read aloud and nearly verbatim classified information regarding the actions and views of U.S. military leaders and the CIA director relating to the foreign country and foreign terrorist organization? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I believe that occurred, that was captured in a recording later in 2017, I believe in April of 2017, not February. | |
| Okay. | ||
| And Mr. Zwanter became aware of your special... | ||
| Your appointment is special counsel, correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
At some point, Mr. Zwanter did become aware of my appointment, yes. | |
| And upon learning of the investigation, Mr. Zwanter deleted digital audio recordings of his conversations with Mr. Biden during the writing of the book Promise Me Dad? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Correct. | |
| And investigators with your office interviewed Mr. Zwanter about the deleted recordings, and he admitted that part of his motivation for deleting this recording was because he was aware there was an investigation, correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Correct. | |
| And did this conduct raise concerns with your office? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It did. | |
| We considered it to be significant evidence that we needed to follow up on. | ||
| Significant evidence. | ||
| And I would argue that you also had significant evidence surrounding the retention of these documents, the storage of these documents. | ||
| And even though there was a bit of a disconnect between What a reasonable juror could conclude, the intent was there, the motive was there for the book, for exoneration, and I would argue that you had enough to move forward. | ||
| My time has expired. | ||
| I yield back. | ||
| Gentle lady from Vermont is recognized for five minutes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Special Counsel Herr, for being here today. | |
| I know it's been hours and hours, and I really appreciate you staying to the better end here. | ||
| And I think it speaks to... | ||
| The possibility and promise afforded by this nation that you as a child of immigrants sit here as special counsel and I as a child of an immigrant sit here as a member of Congress. | ||
| There is a lot that's been said today and part of the challenge that I have is trying to translate this for my constituents back home. | ||
| And so I want to start with sort of the top line. | ||
| So you were tasked with identifying whether criminal conduct occurred regarding classified documents. | ||
| And after over a year of investigation, including 150 witness interviews and over 7 million documents reviewed, you wrote in the first sentences of the executive summary, "We conclude that no criminal charges are warranted in this matter." We would reach the same conclusion even if Department of Justice Policy did not foreclose criminal charges against a sitting president. | ||
| Were those your words? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| So, let's get into it. | ||
| Mr. Herr, at any time did DOJ leadership or the Attorney General attempt to influence the outcome of your investigation? | ||
| No. | ||
| Do you believe it's important that the special counsel investigations or any DOJ investigation be impartial and free of influence from political actors? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Do you believe you were independent and thorough in your report? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Do you think it's true that you received no pressure from Attorney General Garland in this matter? | ||
| That's correct. | ||
| Is it true that you had all of the resources that you needed enabled for you to conduct your interviews, to conduct your investigation, and to complete your report? | ||
| Is it true that you recommended that the Attorney General decline to charge President Biden? | ||
| I submitted a report to the Attorney General explaining my decision that criminal charges were not warranted in this matter. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So you said on page one of the report, quote, we conclude that the evidence does not establish Mr. Biden's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. | ||
| Is it true that your report ultimately concluded that the evidence did not support a finding beyond a reasonable doubt that President Biden willfully retained classified materials? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Is it true that President Biden co-oppedalized? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| with your investigation? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Is it true that President Biden sat for an interview with you the day after the October 7th attacks in Israel in the midst of an international crisis? | ||
| He sat for interviews over two days, October 8th and October 9th. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Is it true that President Biden allowed the FBI to conduct thorough searches of his home and his beach house? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Is it true that your report found multiple possible innocent explanations as to why the classified documents ended up where they did? | ||
| As part of our analysis, we walked through a number of different explanations that defense counsel would present. | ||
| Could present a trial if this case were charged. | ||
| And as you said on page six of your report, quote, in addition to this shortage of evidence, there are other innocent explanations for the documents that we cannot refute. | ||
| I see that language, yes. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Your report reads, with one exception, there is no record of the Department of Justice prosecuting a former president or vice president for mishandling classified documents from his own administration. | ||
| The exception is former President Trump. | ||
| Am I reading that correctly? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Is it true or is it correct that your report recommends no charges and that would be the case even if he were not a sitting president? | ||
| Correct. | ||
| So what we've had today is hour after hour after hour of trying to distract us from the clear statements that come through this report. | ||
| And you yourself have said multiple times today, there was no attempt to obstruct justice by the President, by the Department of Justice, by the Attorney General. | ||
| That you had all the resources that you needed to conduct a fair and thorough investigation and report. | ||
| And that what you concluded was, in fact, the evidence was not sufficient to bring charges against the President for mishandling documents. | ||
| I thank you for being here today. | ||
| I yield back. | ||
| Gentle lady yields back. | ||
| The gentleman from South Carolina is recognized. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. Chairman, I yield to you, such time as you may consume, sir. | |
| I appreciate the gentleman yielding. | ||
| Mr. Hur, why did the White House go, why did the White House lawyers go look in the first place? | ||
| My understanding is they went to the Penn Biden Center. | ||
| Why'd they go look in the first place? | ||
| I mean, look for classified, you know, mishandling of classified, look for classified documents. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Why'd they do it? | |
| What we identified through our investigation was that at a certain date, members of the president's staff went to the Penn-Biden Center in order to get a better handle on what the information, what kinds of evidence and what kinds of materials were at the Penn-Biden Center. | ||
| Were they specifically looking for potential documents that were classified, or was it a broader initial look? | ||
|
unidentified
|
My understanding is that it was a broader initial look, and I'm looking at Chapter 14, page 257 of my report about a visit in March 2021 to the Penn Biden Center. | |
| Okay. | ||
| In March? | ||
|
unidentified
|
In March of 2021. | |
| Was this after the Justice Department began their investigation into President Trump? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I confess I don't have the date of the beginning of the investigation into President Trump at hand. | |
| I believe it was the same month. | ||
| I mean, I believe it was after. | ||
| So I was just curious to that. | ||
| Now, one other thing I think is important for folks to understand is President Biden had this information everywhere. | ||
| You said they initially went to the Penn-Biden Center. | ||
| Which location was it at? | ||
| Do you remember when they initially did their look? | ||
| Was it at the transition office? | ||
| Was it at the temporary Penn-Biden Center in Chinatown? | ||
| Or was it at its current location? | ||
| Where the Penn-Biden Center currently sits here in our final location, I guess, in D.C. Do you remember? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I believe the visit that I referenced in March 2021 that's described on page 257 was to the Penn-Biden Center's permanent and current location. | |
| Permanent and current. | ||
| So there were three places, those three places, classified information was at. | ||
| Is that fair to say? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's correct. | |
| The initial transition office, immediately after the end of the vice presidency, the Penn-Biden Center's temporary office, and then the Penn-Biden Center's permanent office. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So those, and then you had the University of Delaware Library, the University of Delaware Biden Center, right? | ||
| So that's five total. | ||
| And then you had multiple places in his home. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Correct. | |
| The garage, the den, the office upstairs, and the office downstairs. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Correct. | |
| So what is that? | ||
| That's like nine different places. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I've lost count, sir. | |
| It's everywhere. | ||
| And it was documents over a 50-year time frame. | ||
| And then by comparison, because the Democrats want to keep comparing to President Trump's classified document right at his home, with Secret Service protection. | ||
| I don't know that they're anywhere else, were they? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm not aware of other locations, President. | |
| I think that's an important distinction. | ||
| I would yield back to the gentleman from South Carolina. | ||
| I appreciate him yielding. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Chairman. | |
| Briefly, I know we've got two minutes left, but... | ||
| Mr. Herr, how would you define willful? | ||
| With respect to the intent of willfulness, what a jury has to conclude is that someone knew that their conduct was illegal when they engaged in that conduct. | ||
| It's intentional, right? | ||
| It's not by accident. | ||
| It's not accidental or involuntary. | ||
| Correct. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So here's where I disagree with your portion of the report on willful, is that you have a gentleman who served 36 years in the Senate. | ||
| I've only been here a year, but I understand the importance of handling classified information. | ||
| He served eight years as vice president. | ||
| In 2010, it came to the attention of the vice president's staff that classified briefing books had not been returned. | ||
| Even if they were returned, some of the content was missing. | ||
| The same year, the executive secretary raised that nearly 30 of the classified briefing books from the first six months of 2010 were missing. | ||
| In August of that year, then-Vice President Biden failed to return top-secret, sensitive compartmented information contents of a classified briefing book from a trip that he took to the Hamptons. | ||
| And to date, you were unable to determine if these documents were ever recovered. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| Correct. | ||
| So to me, this wasn't... | ||
| When does willfulness as a... | ||
| When does willfulness factor in? | ||
| Is it now in his diminished mental capacity, or is it then when he was serving as senator and vice president? | ||
| A jury would be assessing President Biden's mental state and his intent, or whether or not he had willfulness at the time that the conduct was committed. | ||
| Correct. | ||
| And I think everyone can kind of plainly see the transgression or the difference between then-candidate Biden or Vice President Biden and what is going on now. | ||
| And so this is where I go to it. | ||
| As the chairman talked about in his opening comments, he had 8 million reasons to hold these documents. | ||
| In fact, he disclosed some of this information to his ghostwriter. | ||
| And so I think there could have been willfulness. | ||
| And I think, you know, I've got 10 seconds left. | ||
| But look, since 2016, there have been three candidates. | ||
| To run for president. | ||
| All three have had allegations of issues surrounding the retention and holding of classified documents. | ||
| But Mr. Herr, only one of them has been charged, and that's President Trump. | ||
| And that's why people think and view this as a two-tiered system of justice. | ||
| Thank you, sir. | ||
| The gentleman yields back. | ||
| The chair now recognizes the gentleman from... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Shield, you have unanimous consent? | |
| I'll wait. | ||
| Let him go ahead. | ||
| The gentleman from Colorado, Mr. Buck. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Mr. Hur, they say they saved the best for last, so I'm looking forward to this opportunity. | ||
| First of all, what I've observed in this hearing is that one side thinks you're trying to get President Trump elected, and the other side thinks you're trying to get President Biden elected. | ||
| I served as a prosecutor for 25 years. | ||
| I know that you're going to take grief from both sides. | ||
| You must be doing a great job in your report and during your investigation if you have convinced both sides that you are somewhere in the middle. | ||
| I commend you for your background. | ||
| I would have loved to have met Chief Justice Rehnquist. | ||
| What a hero to conservatives and really Americans, and that must have been a great opportunity for you. | ||
| But when both sides attack you, my admonition is welcome to Congress. | ||
| I do have a question, and it goes along the lines of what Mr. Armstrong and Mr. Fry were asking you earlier. | ||
| I'm really confused about willfulness and your view of willfulness. | ||
| It's clear to me that... | ||
| At the time, Vice President Biden knew he had classified documents. | ||
| He told his, after he left the vice presidency, he told his biographer, ghostwriter, those classified documents are in the basement. | ||
| So he had the mental state that he had classified documents. | ||
| He also knew that his basement was not a skiff. | ||
| It is not a secure area. | ||
| If at that point in time he said, oh my gosh, I've got to call the archivist, I've got to call Secret Service somebody and get these documents taken away, perhaps he has this defense of acting as quickly as he knew about the documents. | ||
| But I don't see where the willfulness is missing when he had those two. | ||
| The element's pretty clear. | ||
| He possessed classified documents. | ||
| He held them in a non-secure area. | ||
| And he did so knowingly. | ||
| He knew he had classified documents in an unsecure area. | ||
| Where is the willfulness missing? | ||
| Well, sir, prosecutor to prosecutor, I certainly agree with you that the evidence in the form of the audio-recorded statement where the president said to his ghostwriter, I just found all the classified stuff downstairs, that is evidence that any prosecutor would present as significant evidence in a case if this went to trial. | ||
| And reasonable jurors might well infer that President Biden formed criminal intent based on that piece of evidence. | ||
| But what we did in our report was to try to walk through exhaustively. | ||
| You know well, as a prosecutor, you need to assess with a very cold eye. | ||
| The strengths of your case and the weaknesses of your case and try to anticipate arguments that defense counsel might well present at trial. | ||
| And what we tried to do in our report was to walk through potential arguments that would be presented by defense lawyers at the president's trial and to determine how, by our judgment, how jurors would receive and perceive the evidence presented, including but not limited to evidence relating to the president's memory gaps that were in So how do you overcome that recording where he says, I've got classified documents. | ||
| He's 30 years in the Senate or whatever it is. | ||
| He obviously knows how he has to treat classified documents. | ||
| I've got classified documents in the basement. | ||
| What is the defense to that? | ||
| That it was a made-up recording? | ||
| That it wasn't his voice? | ||
| That everyone was wrong? | ||
| How do you defend that particular fact as well as... | ||
| I did a lot of tax cases. | ||
| You had to prove a pattern of conduct. | ||
| And in this case, you had a lot of documents in a lot of places. | ||
| How do you overcome those things? | ||
| Yes, Congressman. | ||
| So we walk through a number of different evidentiary gaps that reasonable jurors might focus on, as well as a number of different defense arguments that the president's defense lawyers could present at trial. | ||
| The first is... | ||
| A theory or an argument to the jury that the president, yes, he did say to his ghostwriter, I just found all the classified stuff downstairs, but then soon thereafter forgot about the documents. | ||
| And therefore, it would be difficult to convince a jury that actually he willfully, he knew that it was illegal to keep the documents and he continued to do so. | ||
| A second argument that we considered is that perhaps these documents never actually were in Virginia, in his private rental home there. | ||
| Perhaps the documents were there by virtue of staff or himself having those documents at the Delaware home from the time that he was still vice president all the way through the time of their being discovered. | ||
| And finally, another theory that we walked through in the report is that there were two folders of marked classified documents relating to Afghanistan found in the box in the president's Delaware garage. | ||
| One of them contained national defense information, and the other, it would be a more difficult task to persuade a jury that it did contain national defense information. | ||
| So that argument would be premised on perhaps the president was referring to the one folder that didn't contain national defense information, but was not. | ||
| It would be difficult for the government to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he possessed the one that did contain national defense information. | ||
| So I just laid a lot on you there, but we do our best to explain that at some length in the report. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I yield back. | ||
| The gentleman yields back. | ||
| Mr. Chairman. | ||
| The gentlelady from Texas is recognized. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I thank you. | |
| There's been a lot of time being shared, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| I ask your very brief indulgence. | ||
| Wait, wait, wait. | ||
| You got a unanimous consent or you asked a question? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Your brief indulgence and unanimous consent dash question. | |
| No, no, no, no. | ||
| You can do a unanimous consent request, but you don't get to get another round. | ||
| Someone comes to yield you time, but I don't think they can do that because everyone on the Democrat side has taken their time. | ||
| You know that I appreciate the general lady from Texas, but you don't get to go two rounds. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm not trying to go two rounds. | |
| If you've got a unanimous consent request you want in the record, state so. | ||
| If not, then we're close. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm getting ready to do the unanimous consent request, hoping that someone would come to the door. | |
| I asked unanimous consent. | ||
| We could only be a Republican because all the Democrats have spoken. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I ask unanimous consent that we add to the record, as stated from page one of the executive summary, we conclude that no criminal charges are warranted in this matter. | |
| We would reach the same conclusion, even if the Department of Justice policy did not foreclose criminal charges against the Senate president. | ||
| I ask unanimous consent that that sentence be put in. | ||
| Secondarily, I ask unanimous consent to add something to the record that's already in the record. | ||
| God bless you. | ||
| We'll do it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| And I add, with the emphasis of Sheila Jackson Lee does not have, and I particularly ask that this be added to the record that Mr. Herr stated that Biden couldn't recall when his son Bo died. | ||
| I add unanimous consent out of an article in Politico and indicate that there was no mercy given to Mr. Biden and no mercy given to him in the decision of this report. | ||
| Without objection, so entered. | ||
| Mr. Herr, even though there wasn't a question there, do you want to respond to any of that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, Charlie. | |
| All right. | ||
| Mr. Hur, we want to thank you for being here today. | ||
| And we wish the best to you and your family. | ||
| This concludes today's hearing. | ||
| We thank our witnesses for appearing before the committee today without objection. | ||
| All members will have five legislative days to submit additional written questions for the witness or additional materials for the record. | ||
| Without objection, the hearing is adjourned. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| All right, well, ladies and gentlemen, that was Speedy. | ||
| We just thought we'd let the comment section sort of take over because, again, we do our very level-headed best to not talk over the people or talk over those people testifying. | ||
| It's really hard when it's Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell and Cori Bush and Hank Johnson who believes that if you put enough people on Guam, the island will tip over. | ||
| And so, ladies and gentlemen, that concludes the hearing. | ||
| I think that every side got sort of what they wanted. | ||
| Democrats got to scream violently about Orange Man. | ||
| And Republicans got to ask, like, why the hell didn't you charge Joe Biden? | ||
| He clearly committed crimes. | ||
| We'll explore, I suppose, everything that happened today more thoroughly. | ||
| Meanwhile, while we were live, Ken Buck announced that he's leaving Congress. | ||
| The jackass is able to, like, ask questions during this hearing. | ||
| He's leaving Congress. | ||
| He's just abandoning Republicans. | ||
| Like, a dozen or so Republicans have announced they're going to leave Congress. | ||
| What the hell's going on? | ||
| Like, what's happening? | ||
| They can't even stick around? | ||
| So now there's like a one-seat majority? | ||
| Who's seat majority? | ||
| And they just, like, they all voted to get rid of George Santos? | ||
| Great job, Republicans. | ||
| I mean, truly. | ||
| With friends like these, who needs a Republican Party? | ||
| You just get the Democrat Party permanently, which is the goal here. | ||
| That's why we must fight. | ||
| We need a new generation of conservatives and fighters. | ||
| It can't happen fast enough, ladies and gentlemen. | ||
| Ken Buck announcing he's leaving Congress. | ||
| Can't even stick it out. | ||
| Can't even stick it out and wait for an election. | ||
| These people. | ||
| It really makes you wonder, quite frankly, like, what the deep state has on them. | ||
| I mean, I really do mean that. | ||
| Like, it makes you wonder what, like, compromising information are had on these guys. | ||
| And we, like, you're betting you're crazy. | ||
| Dude, whatever, man. | ||
| We had Tim Burchett on here, who's a member of Congress, straight up saying that's exactly how it operates. | ||
| They get these guys, they get them in compromising positions, whatever they are. | ||
| Tim Burchett said, you wind up naked in a hotel room. | ||
| And you wake up, and you don't know what you're doing. | ||
| And they say, well, you better vote this way. | ||
| That's what the man said. | ||
| So, we believe the members of Congress who come on this program. | ||
| And so... | ||
| What the hell do they have on Ken Buck? | ||
| This is a guy who voted against impeaching Mayorkas. | ||
| He voted against impeaching Mayorkas. | ||
| He's one of these guys. | ||
| So something weird happened to Ken Buck. | ||
| Ken Buck was a, like, really hardcore, like, Republican. | ||
| He was good. | ||
| Ken Buck was good. | ||
| He was a good member of Congress. | ||
| Not great, but he was good. | ||
| He's been in Congress for 10 years. | ||
| What the hell happened? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Shouldn't be allowed to ask questions, though, at this hearing. | ||
| What a coward. | ||
| What a coward. | ||
| We do not come from cowardly people. | ||
| It's time for our Congress and our representatives to reflect the American people and who we are. | ||
| We do not come from cowards. | ||
| These Republicans in Congress, they are acting like cowards. | ||
| Not James Comer or Jim Jordan. | ||
| They are doing a wonderful job, but now we are quite literally one bad fall away from handing Hakeem Jeffries the gavel in the Congress. | ||
| That's how stupid Republicans are. | ||
| This is how dumb this majority has been. | ||
| And I have a lot of people that I want to blame for all this, We don't have time for that right now. | ||
| What we do have time for, ladies and gentlemen, in our fifth hour of broadcast today is to say thank you. | ||
| We deeply appreciate you. | ||
| We will show up for you and we will do the work. | ||
| We will cussle and grind. | ||
| There's a country that needs saving. | ||
| I'm a father. | ||
| I'm a husband. | ||
| I got children. | ||
| I want to leave them a country. | ||
| This is my charge. | ||
| I must leave them an actual functional country. | ||
| Or are you going to leave them Haiti? | ||
| Because that's the question right now. | ||
| Are you going to leave your kids' hate? | ||
| Are you going to leave them a third-world hellscape where every system is in collapse and where criminals and ganglords rule the streets and where they are not in safety? | ||
| Are you going to leave them a stable nation? | ||
| God help us. | ||
| A nation better than we found it. | ||
| I hope so, ladies and gentlemen. | ||
| That is why we fight. | ||
| We encourage you to join our fight. | ||
| Join us at the Benny Brigade. | ||
| You can go to BennyJohnson.com and join the Benny Brigade today. | ||
| That helps us, ladies and gentlemen, that helps us do our show independently. | ||
| If we had a corporate media, if we had cement corporate media shoes, if we were wearing cement corporate media shoes and we were sitting here in a little, like, chained up in a little box with the corporate press, do you think we'd be able to do five hours today? | ||
| Five hours and five minutes we've been live. | ||
| Nope! | ||
| Nope! | ||
| You don't understand how these systems work. | ||
| I know how they work. | ||
| We wouldn't be able to do it. | ||
| So the way we're able to do this is your help. | ||
| Sign up, ladies and gentlemen, today. | ||
| Go to our brand new Benny Johnson store. | ||
| If you sign up, you get a free keychain from us, made by and crafted by American veterans with the brigade logo on it. | ||
| And, well, made from sweet American leather. | ||
| So check out our new shop and sign up for the Benny Brigade today to support our work here. | ||
| All products in our store are made by small, patriot-owned businesses. | ||
| So you support us and you support other patriots. | ||
| You may be screaming at your screen during this hearing. | ||
| It wasn't the most rage-inducing hearing I've ever heard. | ||
| It's annoying, this hearing, that Robert Herr wasn't allowed to charge Joe Biden. | ||
| You can tell he wanted to charge Joe Biden. | ||
| You can tell he knows Joe Biden's a criminal. | ||
| But the DOJ prevented him from charging Joe Biden. | ||
| There's no justice in this world. | ||
| This world is a sunken and fallen place. | ||
| We must remember that. | ||
| But there is justice in Christ our Lord. | ||
| There is a true... | ||
| Providence in following the scriptures, and you can find that justice here on earth. | ||
| Simply if you read the words of God, meditate on them, and we try and do that every single show, ladies and gentlemen, with our verse of the day. | ||
| Thessalonians 2, 316. | ||
| Now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times in every way. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The Lord be with you all. | |
| Peace is a... | ||
| It's an important thing to find in life. | ||
| It is an important thing to strive for. | ||
| It is talked about a lot in the scriptures. | ||
| And the reason why I think it's talked about a lot, quite frankly, is just a simple Christian. | ||
| No theologian over here. | ||
| Just as a guy, like, sits down and humbly reads my Bible every night. | ||
| Like, the reason why I think peace is talked about so much as a maxim and as a gift from God is that it's really hard to find in this sunken place. | ||
| In a place that is, like, controlled by Satan. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| I'm not saying God didn't have power over here. | ||
| Of course, God... | ||
| God has total and complete power. | ||
| But this world is a sunken world, right? | ||
| And it's a sunken place. | ||
| And Satan prowls around like a lion looking to destroy things, the scriptures say. | ||
| And what the fruits of that are is chaos and anguish and pain and suffering and not peace. | ||
| I try very hard not to like do these kind of correlations. | ||
| Right? | ||
| And like project like the scriptures and truths of the Bible onto the modern day. | ||
| But all I ask for you is like, look at the people you're voting for. | ||
| Look at the way that you're interacting in the world. | ||
| Is it bringing peace? | ||
| Are you moving toward peace? | ||
| Everyone can have bad moments. | ||
| Are you moving toward peace and peacefulness? | ||
| Are you starting new wars? | ||
| Are you creating wars all around the world? | ||
| Well, that's not a good thing. | ||
| You should be in favor of peace. | ||
| Safety, security, peacefulness, order, beauty. | ||
| These are things of God. | ||
| So, ladies and gentlemen, may the Lord of Peace himself give you peace at all times, ladies and gentlemen. | ||
| May God bless you as we march forward today. | ||
| Thank you for watching. | ||
| It's your boy, Benny. | ||
| We are out here marching right alongside you, fighting right alongside you, and we will win. |
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