Robert Hur Defends His Report in Biden Documents Case

Robert K. Hur, the special counsel who investigated President Biden, on Tuesday fiercely defended the disparaging assessment of the president’s mental state included in his final report — and his decision not to charge Mr. Biden with a crime.

Mr. Hur, appearing before the House Judiciary Committee to answer questions about his polarizing 345-page report, cast himself as an impartial arbiter. He said he had expressed concerns about Mr. Biden’s memory because he needed to justify not bringing a case against Mr. Biden after some evidence showed that the president had willfully retained sensitive material from his vice presidency.

“I resolved to do the work as I did all my work for the department: fairly, thoroughly and professionally,” he said in his opening statement.

Mr. Hur, a registered Republican who has been slammed by Mr. Biden’s allies for including his politically damaging assessment of Mr. Biden’s memory, showed little emotion during the hearing, but reacted angrily when a Democrat suggested he had “smeared” the president to bolster Mr. Trump.

“Partisan politics played no part whatsoever in my work,” said Mr. Hur, 51, a former Trump Justice Department official whose appointment was lauded by some Democrats who praised his work as a prosecutor in Maryland.

About an hour before Mr. Hur testified, Democrats on the congressional panel released a lightly redacted transcript of the five-hour interview Mr. Hur and his team conducted with Mr. Biden. It offered a more nuanced portrayal than the special counsel’s damning description of the 81-year-old president as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”