Special counsel Robert Hur testifies on Biden classified documents probe

It wasn’t until Republican Rep. Ken Buck raised the final question during Tuesday’s hearing that former special counsel Robert Hur gave one of his fullest explanations as to why he didn’t bring charges against President Joe Biden.

“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,” Buck said to Hur. 

During his questioning, Buck pushed Hur to explain how he determined whether Biden willfully kept classified documents, noting that Biden should have known the areas where he kept classified documents were not secure locations and that he didn’t call the National Archives when he found classified documents while working with the ghostwriter of his memoir. 

This gave Hur the opportunity to explain there were “evidentiary gaps” that defense attorneys or reasonable jurors could focus on in the case, including that although Biden told his ghostwriter he found classified information, he may have later forgotten about the documents.

“A second argument that we considered is that perhaps these documents never actually were in Virginia,” Hur added. Biden had told his ghostwriter he had found “classified stuff” in a Virginia home he rented until 2019.