How Alleged Geezer Joe Biden Caught Rob Hur and Marc Krickbaum Trying to Sandbag Him
I was giggling during much of the atrocious Robert Hur hearing yesterday. Just as it started, House Judiciary Democrats released the transcript of the Joe Biden interview (October 8, October 9). It’s the kind of no-advance release that Sarah Isgur (whom Hur paid to be his spox for the hearing) did while at DOJ, most notably with the texts of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. It was particularly damaging to Hur that when he denied that, in his interview, Biden had correctly and forcibly stated the date of Beau’s death, the transcript was out showing that’s a lie.
But it also meant that as Hur was spending hours (fewer than the combined length of his Biden interview, though) defending calling Biden an old geezer, people were reading the transcript and seeing that he misrepresented Biden’s acuity.
The transcript is more important, however, for the way it shows that Hur — and even more so, another former Trump US Attorney, Marc Krickbaum — came into that interview with a theory of Biden’s criminal wrong-doing, repeatedly tried to sandbag the President into admitting culpability, only to have the old geezer point out their logical flaws.
Generally, the plan for the interview went like this:
- Biden’s transition from VP to private citizen
- Map of the houses
- Specific furniture from 2017 in Chain Bridge and 2019 in Wilmington
- The notebooks and the filing cabinets and the ratty box
- [Break for the day]
- Clarification about when Biden did send marked documents back
- The Thanksgiving Memo
- Confidential memo in back
- Zwonitzer interview and 8 words out of 33 words
- How and why he had just returned marked documents
- His notebooks
- The Afghan docs
- Tranches of deliveries to the garage
- Penn Center general
- Penn Center specific
- Naval Observatory meeting
On the first day, they got Biden to explain how he managed the 2017 transition and where stuff, especially furniture, was in both his existing Wilmington house and a house he rented in Virginia from 2017 to 2019 that they call Chain Bridge. It ended with a review of the box from the garage, what both men were desperate to make a smoking gun.
Much of the second day, in which Krickbaum took the lead, focused on trying to get Biden to endorse their theory that Biden had taken the Afghan documents home because he wanted to write a book on them. He debunked that theory, but they nevertheless put it into the report anyway.
The part of the report where they laid out this theory is riddled with false claims.
In the same box in the garage where FBI agents found the classified Afghanistan documents, agents also found other documents of great personal importance to Mr. Biden, including photos of his son Beau and documents Mr. Biden filed, accessed, and used in early 2017, during the same time he told Zwonitzer found the classified documents about Afghanistan in his Virginia home. 825 The evidence suggests that Mr. Biden maintained these files himself.
Mr. Biden had a strong motive to keep the classified Afghanistan documents. He believed President Obama’s 2009 troop surge was a mistake on par with Vietnam. 826 He wanted 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. 827
This evidence provides grounds to believe that Mr. Biden willfully retained the marked classified documents about Afghanistan. If he was not referring to those documents-later found in his garage-when he told Zwonitzer he had “just found all the classified stuff downstairs,” it is not clear what else Mr. Biden could have been referring to. 828
825 See Chapters Five and Six.
826 See Chapter Six.
827 See id.
828 See Chapters Five and Six
The photos of Beau were campaign photos, not personal photos. There was a good deal of administrative files in the box, which Biden pointed out in his letter, he didn’t manage himself. The report doesn’t even present proof that Biden was accessing all those files in 2017 and — as Hur himself admitted — there were files from much earlier and much later.
Since Biden had the memo he wrote himself, there was no reason to keep all the other documents. The memo was better exoneration, as it was proof not only that he was right, but that he warned President Obama in advance, the only memo of the kind he sent Obama, he claimed. And the claim that “it is not clear what else Mr. Biden could have been referring to,” is sheer fantasy. By context — the context they only provided once in the report — it was a specific reference to the memo, which (as they also showed) would have been found stuck in one of the notebooks Biden was using in the interviews.
As I laid out here, nothing about this theory ever made sense!
And, as I noted, this discussion cites to the chapters of the report I’ve called novelistic, which incorporate direct testimony only from Ron Klain. This is the theory that Hur himself describes as “reading into” the facts of the case.
But now look at how Hur and Krickbaum came into those interviews with a determination to get Biden to admit to it anyway.
On the first day, Hur led Biden through a discussion of the box and its contents (remember: the FBI put the documents into a new box out of order, and they did all questioning on documents based on photos, which were often hard to read). Biden repeatedly said that, given that there was such a mix of things in the box, someone probably just shoved them all in together.
Hur: But do remember how these materials got into the box and then how that box got into the garage?
Biden: No, I don’t remember how it got — I don’t remember how a beat-up box got in the garage.
[snip]
Somebody must’ve, packing this up, just picked up all the stuff and put it in a box, because I didn’t.
[snip]
See, that’s what makes me think just people gathered up whatever they found, and whenever the last thing was being moved. So the stuff moving out of the Vice President’s residence, at the end of the day, whatever they found, they put — they didn’t separate it out, you know, Speakers Bureau or whatever the hell it is, or Beau. They just put it in a single box. That’s the only thing I can think of.
[snip]
But my guess is that they — based on the dates, they were Vice Presidential material initially. They got put in a box and probably got sent — either to the Penn Center or to Chain Bridge Road or, for some reason, got sent up to Wilmington. [my emphasis]
At this point, Bob Bauer interrupted and noted that Hur was supposed to be asking Biden what he remembers, not asking him to engage in “detective work” about how things may have ended up where they did.
Bauer: But to be clear, your question is whether he knows —
Hur: Correct.
Bauer: — has a clear recollection of how they —
Biden: No, I have no idea.
Bauer: got [muddled] Okay.
Hur: Correct.
Bauer: I want to make sure it’s clear.
Hur: But it’s also helpful if he has thoughts as to how —
Bauer: Well, I mean, I’d like to stay with his recollection and not put him in a position where he has to speculate or —
Hur: Understood.
Bauer — create assumptions or try to engage in detective work.
Biden started looking at something and Hur brought him back to the box.
Hur offered up — literally asking Biden to endorse their theory — that because there are not other boxes with file folders in the garage, the materials in the box must have come from two file cabinets in another room, at least one of which came from Chain Bridge.
Hur: So just going back and forth, there’s blue hanging file folders, there’s some red manila folders, there’s yellow manila folder, both in the garage box and in the lower drawer of the cabinet in the den — in the pool table room. So it looks to us what happened was the materials that were in the box in the beat-up — the materials that were in the beat-up box in the garage, at some point, were in the cabinet in the pool table room. They got put in a beat-up box and shoved out in the garage.
Bauer was fairly incredulous at this leap of logic.
Bauer: Just for my sake, Rob, how do you — I just really — I honestly don’t quite understand.
Hur: Yes.
Bauer: These are file folders, right? They could — people buy file folders, so —
Hur: Correct.
Bauer: Why do you assume that that’s the trajectory here? I hope, I hope —
Hur: I am — I’m not assuming. I’m saying that it just —
Bauer: You said, you said it looks to us like this —
Hur: — from physical appearance. From physical appearance. So–
At this point, Biden and Bauer were looking at something entirely different. Once everyone was looking at the same picture (which, remember, is a picture of folders that were not in the same order as they had been in the tattered box, because the FBI rearranged the order on repacking), Hur tried again.
Hur: So was that material previously in the file cabinet that was in the pool table room and that is shown in FBI_0040?
Biden offered what was, to him, a more plausible explanation.
Biden: Wouldn’t it be more likely it was on a floor in the garage, they took it off the garage and put it in the file cabinet? Why would you put it out in the — unless you want to throw it away.
Hur: Well, maybe I framed this question — well, what are we trying to do is to figure out where was this stuff in the garage before it was in the garage.
Bauer interrupted again to remind Hur he was supposed to be asking Biden about what he remembers, and he had already said he didn’t know how the box got there.
Bauer: And my understanding, just to be clear —
Hur: Yes.
Bauer: because I really don’t want to be unhelpful, I want to be —
Hur: Yes.
Bauer: helpful, is I thought, unless I misunderstood —
Hur: Yes.
Bauer: His answer earlier was he doesn’t know how it got there.
Hur claimed that Biden said he did not recall how the box got there.
Hur: He doesn’t recall. And my follow-up —
Biden first said that he didn’t remember, because that’s the question Hur asked. But then he specifically said (bolded above) he did not pack up the box. That’s consistent with what he said about every other box they asked about, and consistent with the conclusion that Hur drew about the most sensitive documents found, which were at Penn Center.
Bauer intervened again and asked Hur to stop asking the President to speculate. Hur pretended he was just asking the question poorly, but repeated his theory that file folders must all come from the same place.
Bauer: And I’m worried that he’s about to start sort of analyzing speculative assumptions.
Hur: Sure. Well, let me, let me get the question out, because I’ve sort of framed it kind of clunkily here. So given the physical — given the fact that the materials in garage box 1 are different from everything else in the garage in that they’re in hanging file folders, and given their physical — you know, there are some similarities between their appearance and the stuff that’s in the file cabinet in the, in the pool table room, is it — are we wrong to think that maybe the stuff in the garage was formerly in the file cabinet?
Biden pointed out that — particularly since everything got delivered into the garage when it got moved — the opposite made more sense, that this box simply never got moved into the house. Then he repeated again, that he did not know how the box got there — not that he didn’t remember, but that he affirmatively did not know.
Biden: No no more than I think you’re wrong if it was the opposite, stuff that was in the file cabinet was in the garage.
Hur: I see.
Biden: In other words, I, I don’t have any idea.
Bauer intervened again.
Bauer: Yeah. I think —
Hur: Understood.
Bauer: I think we’re kind of going down a trail here that I find confusing. Frankly, I just —
Hur: Yes.
Biden, more plainly, stated that they’re “trying to establish something.” Ultimately, he described that he used to teach logic and pointed out that the logic of Hur’s theory was flawed.
Biden: They’re obviously trying to establish something.
Bauer: do. His recollection is his recollection.
Hur: Okay.
Bauer: and he doesn’t know how it got there.
Hur: Okay, fair enough.
Biden: No, but I, I don’t have any idea.
Bauer: Well, that’s, that’s — then that’s the answer then I think.
Biden: But I don’t know, it just — I used to teach logic. I don’t get even the assertion, but anyway, it doesn’t matter.
The guy Hur accused of being a geezer because he didn’t remember the year, but did (Hur forgot to put in his report) remember the date of Beau’s death ended up lecturing him on how dumb his theory was.
That also didn’t make the report.
The next day, Marc Krickbaum took a more active role in questioning. After walking Biden through the Thanksgiving memo Biden sent Obama to try to dissuade him from surging troops in Afghanistan — which Biden strongly explained he wanted to keep it secret because of the sensitivities of the memo, not because of classified information in it — Krickbaum tested one part of his theory. Did Biden ever think about writing a book about Afghanistan? “I give you my word I never thought about that.” Biden reviewed, for a second time, what he had wanted to write about — the inflection point in history — and Krickbaum interrupted, and Bauer interrupted him. Bauer again complained that prosecutors were asking Biden to speculate so as to endorse their pet theory. In response, Krickbaum demanded a break.
Krickbaum: Okay. That answered my question.
Bauer: And Marc, just really quickly, I promise it’ll be brief. I just really would like to avoid, for the purpose of a clean record, getting into speculative areas. When the President responded and said I don’t recall intending to keep this memo, you then said well, you know, might you have thought it was important to keep it or whatever and he said well I guess, I could have — his recollection as I understand it is, he does not recall specifically intending to keep this memo after he left the Vice Presidency and I want to be — I want these questions to be as clearly answered and recorded on the transcript as possible.
Krickbaum: I think we should take a break at this point.
Laufman: Oh, come on. Come on.
They took a break.
Krickbaum then turned to the interview with Mark Zwonitzer and asked Biden about his comment that he “just found all the classified stuff downstairs,” though only describing, not quoting, the rest of the context.
Biden replied that he didn’t remember. He conceded he probably did tell Zwonitzer about the memo.
Then Krickbaum pulled a fast one, not just quoting only the 8 words without the surrounding context, but also claiming that Biden said he had found marked classified data.
Krickbaum: Okay. Do you remember telling him, “I just found all the marked classified stuff downstairs?”
Biden: Marked?
Krickbaum: Telling Mark? Do you remember saying that to him?
Biden: No.
Reminder, this is the full context, which Krickbaum summarized but did not read verbatim:
So this was – I, early on, in ’09-I just found all the classified stuff downstairs-I wrote the President a handwritten 40-page memorandum arguing against deploying additional troops to Iraq-I mean, to Afghanistan-on the grounds that it wouldn’t matter, that the day we left would be like the day before we arrived. And I made the same argument … I wrote that piece 11 or 12 years ago. [emphasis original]
After Biden stated, no, he didn’t remember raising classified information Zwonitzer, Kirckbaum again asked Biden to endorse his theory:
Kirckbaum: And I guess looking at, you know, the evidence taken together, one simple theory — and I’m just going to ask you if you have anything you want to add when I explain this theory. If the answer is no, the answer is no.
Biden: Okay.
Kirckbaum: One simple theory would be that when you told Mark Zwonitzer in February of 2017, and you were talking about Afghanistan, that you just found all classified stuff downstairs, what you mean was you just found all the classified documents about Afghanistan that were later found in your garage in the lake house. And so, we’re trying to understand if that’s what you meant or not. And I understand you’ve told us you don’t remember, but our question is really if there’s anything else — any other memory or thought you have on this that you want to share with us as we try to make sense of the evidence.
Biden: Other than, only thing I can think of is I was referring to him that I knew of the President — the memo I wrote to the President, I didn’t want that in use for any reason.
Krickbaum asked him specifically if Biden had just seen the Afghan documents that showed up in his garage years later, and Biden pointed out — without having been read the full context — that probably he was talking about the memo itself.
And yet, based on that record, when Hur and Krickbaum wrote up the report, they claimed, “it is not clear what else Mr. Biden could have been referring to.”
There were two more obvious possibilities: That Biden was referring to the red marked document he had found and had sent back. Or, that just as Biden answered, he was referring to the memo itself, which he named explicitly in his comment.
There also was a totally obvious explanation for why the Afghan documents weren’t properly returned: Because Biden wrote the memo while in Nantucket, then returned to DC separately.
Instead of considering the most obvious explanations, Hur and Krickbaum instead engage in their fiction.
No wonder the old geezer made fun of their logic.
Update: Fixed spelling of Krickbaum’s first name.
All in all, Hur exposed himself as the partisan hack that he is. Unfortunately, that probably made his bones for a federal judgeship if the GOP ever gets back in the WH. I also wonder why Hur refused to correct the record when it was clearly spelled out to him from his own by Swalwell and Dean that factual errors made it into the report. Since those changes would have undercut the whole ‘doddering fool’ narrative Hur wanted to supply for the Comer Clown Committee leadership I can understand why he resisted but it’s in black and white from his own transcript.
Would the Senate be able to rectify what looks like a case of lying to Congress (in his report and his testimony yesterday) or will a House flip be necessary? How long does the statute of limitations run for lying to Congress raps?
Hur may think he demonstrated something to Trump, but he and his inner circle don’t want people who are 90% loyal. They want someone who filed charges, never mind the reality.
Trump will have no shortage of candidates for judges. Why bother with Hur when he has even bigger hacks lined up?
And if Biden wins, Hur will be at least 56 by the time a Republican moves in. There is no way they would want someone so old clogging up the pipeline when they could have a 30 year old.
It’s possible Hur was swayed by some promise, but if he believed it, he’s an even bigger fool than he appears.
Well, if Kash Patel is too busy running defense or intelligence agencies, Trump might make Bob Hur Attorney General.
Speculation is just that, but Hur’s MO is very close to Bill Barr’s, just a little heavier on the fan fic padding out the cherry picked “facts”. He clearly saw his job as generating as much smoke as possible from the moldy kindling he had, but he didn’t expect MAGA Republicans wanting him to sacrifice himself for Trump (and them, Comey’s got a lot invested in this farce), or Democrats calling him out on his bullshit quite so hard. “But it worked for Barr”, he must be thinking.
Nothing’s going to happen to Bob Hur as a consequence of yesterday’s testimony.
This is all so pathetic. I’m going to start asking friends and family, who are much younger than Biden, to take a stroll up to their attic, or down to their basement, and look in a box, any box, and see if they can recall when they packed it or how all that stuff got in there.
True dat. I just found the notebook where I record my passwords, which I had been looking for for years.
It was in a stack of papers about my 2020 tax returns. Not only do I not recall why I put it there, but I cannot think of any reason to have put it there.
Blame your cat.
I’ve had stuff fall and haven’t been able to find it again. No way can a stapler disappear!
It can, when the cat takes it.
You probably thought you’d put it in an unlikely place to hide it from password stealers, then forgot about it! I do this all the time. :)
When my grandmother would come to visit she would often make brownies. To make sue we didn’t eat them up too quickly she always his some. Months after she had left we would find petrified brownies stashed in strange places.
Just two days ago I unpacked a box that turned out to be papers I’d hurriedly packed in 2019 after a family emergency. I had no idea what I’d put in there or why; I identified multiple documents that should have been tossed immediately.
And that’s only 5 years.
When my mother and I were getting ready to move in 1996, we found boxes that had been packed for a move in 1956, and never unpacked. She said that if they hadn’t needed to get into them in 40 years, they weren’t worth it, and tossed them. (There was other stuff that got tossed, that I would have kept. She was about as sentimental as a rock, for most stuff.)
But I think the point that Marcy and Bauer (in the transcript) are making is that Biden DID NOT pack those items or decide where the boxes were going. That it would have been Biden’s VP staff or the White House staff that packed and then sent the boxes off. So the better analogy is to ask someone who has had their house packed *for* them for a cross country move — do they know what was in which box that was then stored in a basement.
From what I have read it is a mad scramble at the end of an administration for staff to pack everything up quickly. Not just the President and VP but everyone has to work right up to the last minute. The transition between administrations is a vulnerable time because enemies know there is disruption at the top which is why it is so important for everyone to keep focused on the job, not on packing up.
I think most lawyers would prefer to have Biden as a client rather than Trump, for obvious reasons, except that billable hours (if you get paid) would be much, much less.
Nevermind the hours billed. Biden pays his bills.
Could Hur have been given the choice to retire or be fired? Is Garland that open-eyed yet?
There’s a much clearer rationale for Hur’s resignation that has been offered by previous EW posts on this topic, which is that if he had been a DOJ employee when he had testified, there would have been a lot of additional rules he would have been required to operate under which would have constrained his testimony.
We should not underestimate the degree to which Hur’s report has humiliated Garland. He’s been made to look like a sucker in front of his boss the President and the press. Unless Hur is willing to bet his career on Trump being returned to the White House, there is a hard ceiling on his future at the DOJ. Even if Garland leaves his successor won’t trust Hur any father than they could throw him.
So instead of trying to play it straight, he got coaching on this hearing from Trump aides and made the procedural move (resignation) necessary to follow through on the strategy. He’ll have no trouble moving back into the private sector whether Trump succeeds or fails, and if Trump did by some chance win then he’s got a better chance of an appointment to something far more prestigious than the DOJ career grind would typically offer.
Bob Hur demonstrated while overseeing the Mueller investigation that his politics need no coaching. It would have been useful as a guide to his choice of words, not to his aims or behavior.
Humiliating indeed for Garland. A Special Prosecutor *he* appointed resigns before testifying?
Would not be surprising if WH starts looking for a replacement. But honestly, Garland should fall on his sword right now.
Or maybe this is all part of a subtle agenda to push people like Hur out of senior DOJ positions.
My understanding of prosecutors, and there are many commenters here who know much more about this than me, is that sometimes rather than being faithful finders of facts – sort of like scientists – they will engage a particular theory of what happen and try to browbeat the facts and witnesses into fitting that theory.
I have even read explanations about how we have an advocacy legal system and it’s not a prosecutors (or a defense counsel’s) job to find the Truth, but to advocate for their case as strongly as possible, and the dialectic process results in the best truth that’s available.
That’s what Hur seems to be doing here. I don’t know that I need particular partisanship to explain it other than maybe a general antipathy can explain why he came up with that theory in the first place.
My understanding of prosecutors, and there are many commenters here who know much more about this than me, is that sometimes rather than being faithful finders of facts – sort of like scientists – they will engage a particular theory of what happen and try to browbeat the facts and witnesses into fitting that theory.
I have even read explanations about how we have an advocacy legal system and it’s not a prosecutors (or a defense counsel’s) job to find the Truth, but to advocate for their case as strongly as possible, and the dialectic process results in the best truth that’s available.
That’s what Hur seems to be doing here. I don’t know that I need particular partisanship to explain it other than maybe a general antipathy can explain why he came up with that theory in the first place.
[I think I posted this earlier with the wrong handle, giving moderators a headache. I apologize, and this has the correct handle. Sorry about that.]
It’s a defense counsel’s job to argue their case as strongly as possible, constrained by their responsibility to the court (e.g., don’t lie; don’t let your client lie.) A prosecutor is not supposed to argue a bad case as strongly as possible, or even argue it at all. They’re not supposed to bring a case unless: 1.) they believe the defendant is guilty and 2.) they believe that a reasonable jury will likely find the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Many prosecutors don’t work this way, unfortunately.
Yes to all this, but I think the OP’s point about prosecutors in general is a bit of a rabbit hole – the issue is this specific SC, known to not only be a republican [as almost every special counsel going back as far as I can remember has been], but a hard-core partisan determined to arrive their predetermined outcome, no matter the facts (and the law, in some cases). Ms. Wheeler and others have thoroughly documented why this particular SC was problematic, I’d add only that one well-respected veteran reporter recounted that in all his time covering Maryland politics, he could not recall a single instance of Her ever prosecuting a single republican official. Not one.
I’m from Juhsey. We have an ancient tradition here. When Republicans are in power, the US Attorney prosecutes Democrats. When Democrats are in power, the US Attorney prosecutes Democrats. Fair and balanced!
Joisey? What exit?
(I’m south jersey)
Defense attorney: If the law is against you, pound the facts. If the facts are against you, pound the law. If both are against you, pound the table.
I think you’re right that chasing a particularly theory is normal for some prosecutors.
Claiming you corroborated the theory when you did not is the problem.
Double err, double dick,
Double swear, double prick.
re his heavily publicized old geezer theory, on why he couldn’t charge President Biden, I think the former guy might like to bring that up if/when pleading his case
This goes back to my question a few posts back, how can Garland drop the ball this hard and not be deemed incompetent, and over his skis. I know you wrote about his navel gazing, but this just seems like out and out ignorance of the politics at hand. “Why did the scorpion sting me says the drowning frog?!?
I feel like we have another pious boy scout that is willfully ignorant of the politics. It’s James Comey redux.
That is not at all what good federal prosecutors with integrity are supposed to do. They are supposed to follow the facts and the law, period.
I feel (maybe wrongly and arrogantly) like this is one of those areas where my professional experience and those of the folks in the FBI/DOJ dovetail. It’s entirely reasonable to have an internal hypothesis about what the root cause of an issue is, and it’s entirely reasonable to ask questions or to do other things to test that specific hypothesis. However, involving your “end-user” directly in your hypothesis is just dumb.
What they should be doing in this situation is asking neutral questions where the answer gives evidence to support or refute the theory. If we can show the laptop was in it’s docking station, I can rule out the customer is trying to cover up that they dropped it.
As far as I can tell, the only effective reason for taking the approach we see in the transcript is in order to manipulate the interviewee into making a confession of some sort. Sure, we could ask “Is it possible you dropped the laptop?” and maybe they’d say yes, but I guess I’m lucky that assignment of blame isn’t a job requirement. Still seems pretty shady even in the context of a criminal investigation.
Prosecutors have an overriding ethical duty to see that justice is done. Many do not meet that mark.
“The United States Attorney is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all, and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done. As such, he is in a peculiar and very definite sense the servant of the law, the two-fold aim of which is that guilt shall not escape or innocence suffer. He may prosecute with earnestness and vigor — indeed, he should do so. But, while he may strike hard blows, he is not at liberty to strike foul ones. It is as much his duty to refrain from improper methods calculated to produce a wrongful conviction as it is to use every legitimate means to bring about a just one. It is fair to say that the average jury, in a greater or less degree, has confidence that these obligations, which so plainly rest upon the prosecuting attorney, will be faithfully observed. Consequently, improper suggestions, insinuations, and, especially, assertions of personal knowledge are apt to carry much weight against the accused, when they should properly carry none. The court below said that the case against Berger was not strong, and, from a careful examination of the record, we agree. Indeed, the case against Berger, who was convicted only of conspiracy and not of any substantive offense, as were the other defendants, we think may properly be characterized as weak — depending, as it did, upon the testimony of Katz, an accomplice with a long criminal record. In these circumstances, prejudice to the cause of the accused is so highly probable that we are not justified in assuming its nonexistence. ” US v Berger 1935
“…. that the day we left would be like the day before we arrived.” No truer words were ever spoken…
I wanted Pete B. but South Carolina democrats gave us Joe Biden and I am forever grateful. He has been the best President of my lifetime.
I used to think that those that became attorneys were smart, but I have been dissuaded of that notion.
I could not agree more – best president of my lifetime, hands down.
(And I wanted him all along, but understood why others had their preferred candidates).
It’s one of my pet peeves that we elect people (and appoint cabinet members) to sit atop some of the most enormous bureaucracies in human history when so few of them have any professional managerial experience.
In that sense I look at Pete’s career track and I’m grateful he’s gotten the opportunity to helm DOT. That is invaluable experience for him on multiple tracks, and barring anything crazy he’ll be with us for a while.
Not sure Biden is the best President of my lifetime (Eisenhower on down) but he is probably the most effective (in what I consider positive directions, Reagan was most effective in negative ways). He knows the government inside and out, better than any other of the Presidents of my lifetime.
Having lived in Delaware for a long time, I’ve had opportunity to see Biden’s politics up close and personal. For me, there was not a lot to like (Violent Crime Enforcement, Defense of Marriage, his support of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention Act, his role in Clarence Thomas hearings …).
My how the turntables. Now I can’t say enough about the current incarnation of Joe Biden. What he’s accomplished is remarkable when one considers the congress he has to work with. He’s made progress on climate, infrastructure, judicial appointments, science and the economy. I don’t understand how he isn’t more popular.
Biden was something like my third or fourth choice in the 2020 primary, but after the primary, the only way I wouldn’t have voted for him in the general was if I was DEAD. Even if I thought the people I preferred could have SOMEHOW gotten elected in 2020, and could have done a better job than Biden since January 2021, the job Biden has done is more than “good enough”. I definitely voted for the right guy in the 2020 general, and I voted for the same right guy in the 2024 Democratic primary.
I am pleased that the other people I preferred in the 2020 primary are significantly younger, and in a perfect world, maybe they are among the younger progressives learning values from his example as president, that he never had a chance to display as a senator or vice president. I look forward to reading Biden biographies, and I can’t think of another living politician I’d say that about.
He’s been better than expected.
I will say that he’s the first president in my lifetime (56) that I’m aware of planning for future generations specifically and not just for near-term political cycles. We haven’t had a president who has looked to the future like this in a long time.
Chuck Rosenberg’s virtually unqualified support for Bob Hur’s professionalism has not aged well.
Mark Joseph Stern’s take on Bob Hur, and Merrick Garland, is likely to age much better.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/03/robert-hur-testimony-merrick-garland-biden-lies.html
That article and Marcy’s sterling efforts are ringing a strident warning bell for me that all should heed, not least ambitious right wingers in the legal profession: if you infect the justice system with unprincipled self-promotion in the service of a political figurehead rather than fundamental principle, you end up in a remarkably short time with a repressive hollowed-out simulacrum exactly like the Russian one. Does anyone really think that this will serve them well?
Yet this is where the Hurs, Barrs, Weisses, Zieglers, Cannons, and all the other unfaithful servants are step-by-step taking things. Propelled by a fear all too common now among too many Republicans, that they are increasingly failing to command the support of a significant majority of Americans, so instead they are increasingly turning to anti-democratic means to prevail, all the while loudly proclaiming their false self-serving “patriotism”.
I was going to write something similar to you, earlofh. The discrepancies between the testimony and the report make me wonder how Hur’s ambition led him to disregard the likelihood of ridicule from his obviously baseless assessments being exposed. I suppose Hur’s willingness to perpetrate a hit job (reputation be damned) makes him attractive to some clients.
What does ridicule really matter? And ridicule only comes after the facts come out, but again it doesn’t matter.
All that matters is the first impression and the multitude of news stories that report on the first impression (controlling or creating the narrative).
WAPO has 33 stories on Biden’s age–that’s the first impression narrative. Then, when the facts come out and the first impression is revealed as a lie, they move on to another topic and maybe write a story or two challenging the initial narrative–but the damage is done.
Barr makes his statement about Mueller’s report and it is a lie. But the damage is done and the press goes berserk getting their first take in, and why go through the bother of correcting themselves?
rinse repeat.
Ridicule? It’s nothing to be scared of. Adam Ant knew that back when I was young:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9p__WmyAE3g
Is Trump all his fault? That would be very depressing indeed.
Well, that was a 30 minute rabbit hole. Thanks, I guess.
I only managed to see the 1985 tour. Good stuff.
I agree that if the last thirty years has taught us anything, it’s that Republicans are not stopped by shame or ridicule: they have misshapen it into a badge of honor rather than the social stigma it is, and which is meant to stop or lessen the offending behavior.
By definition, by standing so far outside the social norm, Republicans put themselves into another tribe altogether.
Today, after staffing up more than 4 writers to overhype this nothing burger, WaPo disappeared it.
OTOH, Jennifer Rubin in the WaPo had a great comment:
“The gap between the transcript and Hur’s characterization of Biden is so vast, I can think of only two explanations: political bias or poor memory.”
As the little girl in the Old El Paso commercial says, “Why not both?”
Malice undermined by incompetence
You nutshelled it.
“Incompetence amplified by malice” might be a way to frame it from another angle.
“Bauer intervened again and asked Hur to **step** asking the President to speculate. “
Typo (I think)
Step -> stop
Greatest country in the world. What a remarkably stupid waste of time.
Geezer
If you give Hur a geezer,
he might stick him with a tweezer,
He might do it at his leisure,
and try to give him a seizure.
If you give Hur a geezer,
he might try to put him in a freezer,
He might become a tortfeasor,
or a twisted MAGA pleaser.
If you give Hur a geezer,
he might need an appeaser,
After his shoot-the-breezer
bests him in a brain teaser.
I hope that those are zircon-encrusted tweezers ;-)
Moving to Montana soon
Gonna be dental floss tycoon
Gonna be a mental toss flycoon.
So, counting me, that’s at least two old geezers making fun of their logic.
I’m not sure what it’s reasonable to expect Biden to remember during his interviews, but I’m pretty sure that his interviewers failed to meet ANY reasonable expectations for their questioning. Sheesh.
When someone schools you at the level of “I taught logic, and this isn’t that”, maybe you should have tried harder …
Joe Biden is not going to corral many Republican votes, not even from disaffected Nikki Haley supporters or from the likes of Mitt Romney or Ken Buck. He needs his own voters to come out and vote en masse. That may require him to rethink his priorities and how he sells them. I would suggest more focus on aid to jobs and education, cutting student debt, protecting SS and Medicare and cutting back on its privatization through so-called Medicare Advantage plans. A woman’s right to choose. A host of other popular priorities await his support.
He needs a group of supporters who will hammer Trump for every cruel step and program he advocates. He needs a bigger group extolling the virtues of what he will do instead.
Much good sense there, although I’m more optimistic that Biden will get at least some crossovers. But even if moderate Republicans merely refuse to turn out to back the Trumpistas, that is still half-of-something rather than nothing, and could still make a difference where it matters. Not to be counted upon, but still…
Fundamentally though it is indeed all about motivation. Including rigorously avoiding the traditional Democrat supporter stupidity of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. Your suggestions are a good antidote. Judging by Biden’s recent comments, those talking points are already being recognised.
I’m not worried about Biden’s reelection. Sitting Presidents running for office again have to be able to chew gum and ride a bike at the same time. Biden has many advantages, chief among them is this is not his first rodeo. Experience matters, more so in this election. The only worry I have is the dems absolutely have to hold the Senate.
The main fear I have is the electoral shenanigans the traitors intend to perpetrate.
I agree. The topics and some more are mentioned in AP’s report on 15 youth groups endorsing Biden (https://apnews.com/article/biden-youth-activists-joint-endorsement-reelection-age-15ea5b67e05f2dc6c41ba7f48cfccdcd).
So much, BTW, about Biden not appealing to the youth. Two quotes from the AP article:
That gives hope — yet still depending on the voter turnout.
I’ve read the first of these transcripts and just want to say that
it seems to me that Joe Biden has kissed the Blarney Stone.
The other thing that keeps going through my head:
In a less literary reference, one notes the classic alt-rock Weezer (not Geezer) lyrics:
With this very unpleasin’ sneezin’ & wheezin’
The calliope crashed to the ground.
This like the Comey presser from July 2016. Comey cleared Hillary Clinton but went further than he should have…
“Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”
The words “extremely careless” allowed the right to keep the media pressure ratcheted up on the “But Her Emails” fake scandal. The “Lock her up” chants got louder and louder. Deja vu eight years later we again have the media ignoring the criminal exoneration and focusing on the stuff that should not have been included.
That was Comer covering up for the absolute crappy job the FBI did handling that investigation.
A month ago, I laid a rubric of fuckery as a way of thinking about Hur’s report:
[Since that time, after reading Dr. Wheeler’s intervening posts, I have decided that category 4 is probably best described as “Info op fuckery”.]
The transcript is interesting to me partly because it shows how easily generalized federal prosecutorial fuckery (latching on to a theory made out of whole cloth) can be used as a foundation to build the other three stages.
That’s true. And it could well be just that. Certainly, I’ve spoken to a bunch of people who believed that’s what explained Durham (but not Andrew DeFilippis).
I think there is another explanation for what Biden was saying in what Krichbaum summarized. Maybe there is a mistranscription from the audio. What if Biden had actually used the past perfect instead of the past tense? Read it this way:
“So this was – I, early on, in ’09-I’d just found all the classified stuff downstairs-I wrote the President a handwritten 40-page memorandum arguing against deploying additional troops to Iraq-I mean, to Afghanistan . . .”
If you read it that way, I think it sounds like Biden is relating an anecdote that back in ’09 he had been down in the secure areas beneath the White House. He had discovered some classified reports on the Afghanistan situation that disturbed him enough to write a 40-page memo to Obama. Maybe it isn’t obvious, but that’s the alternative explanation which has always occurred to me. Maybe Biden felt like he needed to concede it may have been referring to the memo, because Hur is bent on it, but it just doesn’t seem in character for him to refer to “classified stuff” downstairs at his own house at all.
The mouth makes an identical shape to say “I just” and “I’d just”. There is just a very slight difference to how long the tongue stays on the hard palate, and Biden has a speech impediment, so maybe Krichbaum misheard in the original notes or transcription. Are there audio recordings? It would be interesting if they turn up and plain as day it’s Biden saying, “I’d just found . . .” but it’s only Democrats that can hear it.
That’s interesting. There is one passage in the transcript where Krickbaum makes the “8 words out of 33 words” in 9 (nine) words:
It’s on page 196 of the combined pdf file, or page 37 of the Oct. 9 transcript.
Substitute Krichbaum with Zwonitzer in the comment above. I meant to say that maybe Zwonitzer mis-heard or mis-transcribed the past perfect “I’d just” as past tense “I just” in the original interview notes. Sorry for the mistake on the names.
In the quote you are pointing to, Konny, maybe Krichbaum is there situating Biden as being in the basement past perfect to Zwonitzer’s interview, but I’m not above saying that Hur and Krichbaum know the truth that Biden was referring to the White House, because that makes it easier to attribute their out-of-context quotation, because they want to assert the context instead of presenting it to Biden in a way where he might remember the true context.
This is very interesting. I would need to check the transcript of the Biden interviews, but did he or his lawyer ever raise this possibility? If not, it could still be true, but it’s a moot point. It would be hard to have relied upon that as a defense in any resulting trial.
Right, but aside from the law there is still impeachment. If Biden actually were talking about downstairs at the White House, it would be nice if the record were set straight and there were professional accountability for Hur. If it’s demonstrable in audio somewhere Biden may have said “I’d just”. Doesn’t Biden’s team have Zwonitzer’s audio or would that not necessarily have been disclosed?
That Biden talking about classified materials in his basement was Hur’s central evidence in his report Biden may have “willfully” retained anything classified. However, I think reviewing a bunch of classified material downstairs at the White House prompted Biden to write the memo to Obama. It makes sense as a story an experienced interviewee would lay out for a writer like Zwonitzer.
“that they call Chain Bridge”
Chain Bridge Road is a Northern Virginia road that provides access to Chain Bridge, a narrow but important Potomac River crossing from Virginia to Washington, DC. The Biden family rented a house – a mansion, really – with a Chain Bridge Road address.
https://northernvirginiamag.com/home/real-estate/2021/01/08/see-the-nova-home-where-the-bidens-used-to-reside/
Ruth Marcus has an opinion piece in the Washington Post today about how “The special counsel was unfair to Biden and his transcript proves it”.
Unfortunately she was very timid in condemning Hur’s conduct. She gave him the benefit of the doubt as if he tried but “failed in his responsibility”, rather that setting out in the first place to do a partisan hit-job on Biden as Dr. Wheeler’s reporting has shown.
What Does “Defend Democracy” Actually Mean?
Biden’s State of the Union hinted at a key shift in the liberal imagination: From a merely restorative to a potentially more transformative vision for America
THOMAS ZIMMER [Historian at Georgetown // Democracy and Its Discontents – Podcast: Is This Democracy // Newsletter: Democracy Americana] MAR 12, 2024
https://thomaszimmer.substack.com/p/what-does-defend-democracy-actually
Zimmer, between
American exceptionalism and The anti-fascist consensus, re-imagined
He uses Langston Hughes’ phrase from Let America Be America Again https://poets.org/poem/let-america-be-america-again
Chain Bridge. That brings back memories. It runs from the Chain Bridge, which crosses the Potomac, through Arlington (where I grew up) and all the way out to McLean and Vienna.
I think we overestimate how sharp you have to be if you are defending premises that are clearly and also subjectively true. If you spend your day at the Eagles game, and then someone comes along and tells you that you actually murdered Albert Einstein in a laboratory, it won’t be any great feat of intellect to keep to your story and keep saying, “but I never was at the library… your theory is that I was at the library but I never went there.” Etc. etc.
I agree Biden is in full possession of his faculties, and this was all stupidity. But he had a much better position to argue from, because he wasn’t trying to manufacture a big pile of horseshit.
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