CNN host Jake Tapper reminded Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., how he was “relentlessly harsh against Special Counsel Robert Hur” and his report on President Biden despite it being “pretty accurate” during a Sunday show segment.
During a segment on Thursday, Tapper referenced Schiff’s questioning of President-elect Donald Trump’s Attorney General nominee Pam Bondi, particularly in light of her claim that most Americans no longer trust the Justice Department, Fox News reported.
Schiff attributed the criticism of the DOJ to Republicans “trashing” the institution, but Tapper pointed out that he and other Democrats had also criticized the Justice Department in the past.
“President Biden gave a pretty harsh assessment of the investigation into his son Hunter,” Tapper began. “He basically threw the Justice Department under the bus there for those investigations. And Democrats, including you, were relentlessly harsh against Special Counsel Robert Hur for making an observation that proved pretty accurate, about how Joe Biden might appear to a jury as a ‘well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.’”
“I was critical of that for good reason,” Schiff argued. “And that is, you don’t put gratuitous personal observations like that in a prosecutorial memo. You just don’t. And it was done for a political reason,” Schiff claimed, ignoring the fact that Hur’s assessment wasn’t ‘personal’ it was an observation based on his interactions with Biden — and that it was spot-on.
“So it’s not that, you know, everyone, including special counsels, necessarily follow [Department of Justice] policy the way I believe they should. And when they don’t, I call it out. And as indeed I did, I disagreed with the president’s comments about the prosecution of his own son,” Schiff said.
Schiff continued to blame Republicans for a “a multi-year campaign” to paint the Justice Department as the “deep state.” Tapper provided a brief explanation of the context surrounding Hur’s comments before transitioning to another topic.
“I think Robert Hur would say he needed to explain why he wasn’t going to prosecute President Biden for what he thought was a violation of the law,” Tapper clarified.
Although Hur determined that Biden knowingly kept classified materials in violation of the law, his February report ultimately concluded that due to Biden’s reduced mental capacity, he would not recommend charging him.
“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,” Hur wrote in his report.
During a House hearing in March, Hur was viciously smeared by Schiff, then a congressman from California.
“I want to go back to your opening statement in which you said that you did not disparage the president, your report, but of course, you did disparage the president,” Schiff said at the time. “You disparaged him in terms you had to know would have a maximal political impact. You understood your report would be public, right?”
He continued, “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. When you knew that would influence a political campaign, you had to understand, and you did it anyway. You did it anyway.”
Hur defended his actions and his conclusions in his final report, though he took flak from Republicans for refusing to bring charges against Biden though he concluded the president had committed crimes.
