Robert Hur explicitly said he “did not exonerate” President Joe Biden at the end of his yearlong special counsel investigation.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat from Washington state, elicited the comments while tussling with Hur over his conclusions. She claimed Hur “exonerated” Biden, but the special counsel immediately took issue with the term during a tense exchange.
“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,” Jayapal said.
“I need to go back and make sure that I take note of a word that you used, ‘exoneration,’” Hur said. “That is not a word that is used in my report and that is not a part of my task as a prosecutor.”
“You exonerated him,” Jayapal retorted.
“I did not exonerate him. That word does not appear in the report,” Hur said.
The result of this back-and-forth is that Jayapal spurred Hur to say something that clearly isn’t helpful for Biden, whom she was aggressively trying to defend.
Jayapal brought this up while arguing Hur didn’t have enough evidence to conclude Biden broke the law, in addition to Hur’s determination that a jury would sympathize with the president because of his age and at-times faltering memory.
