Talk about a cheap shot

[BeyondGeography]

Biden spent five hours answering Hur’s questions on October 8 and 9.

From a response letter from Biden’s attorneys which is included in the report:

“We do not believe that the report’s treatment of President Biden’s memory is accurate or appropriate. The report uses highly prejudicial language to describe a commonplace occurrence among witnesses: a lack of recall of years-old events,” the lawyers write. They complain that other witnesses’ lapses in memory are not treated with the same pejorative tone, and say that Biden’s interview occurred the day after the October 7 attacks in Israel, so the president’s attention was elsewhere. “I was so determined to give the Special Counsel what they needed,” Biden said in a statement, “that I went forward with five hours of in-person interviews over two days on October 8th and 9th of last year, even though Israel had just been attacked on October 7th and I was in the middle of handling an international crisis.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/special-counsels-devastating-charge-against-biden/677396/

[gab13by13]

1. I called it when Garland made Hur special counsel

Garland allowed Hur to do his Comey moment when he inserted his personal opinions in his report.

Weissmann and Katyal felt it was disgusting.

[MOMFUDSKI]

4. Why is garland still in place?

Replace him.

[ananda]

6. Second that motions.

In fact, he should have been replaced already.

[catrose]

8. And third

[mahina]

2. He's sharper than they are on his worst day.

Cretins.

[PortTack]

7. ☝️☝️☝️☝️☝️☝️

[onecaliberal]

3. Garland is a POS used car salesman AT BEST!

He is helping dump and cons every chance he gets. Can we get a fucking AG who actually cares about the god damned law? IS that too much to ask, one who isn't afraid of an orange cancer destroying democracy.

[redqueen]

5. Can't add anything to that.

K&R

[llmart]

9. He needs to be asked to resign.

As an older adult, that statement infuriates me! I'm sharper than people much younger than I am and that may sound like boasting, but it's true. I'm also a retired HR manager and if one of my people said such an ageist remark, I'd have them pack up their stuff and leave.

[onecaliberal]

10. He's clearly unwilling to go after recons in our government and allowed dump to

Rip off, sell and continue to hold our nations most closely held secrets.
He has also allowed the coup to roll on. When he says no one is above the law I could just fucking puke.

[multigraincracker]

11. I think, even with his age,

that with experience he has he has picked great advisers To cover every base
But that’s just me.

[PatrickforB]

12. Hur is clearly a partisan hack, and his report was filled with cheap shots.

And that baying, braying bunch of donkeys in the press corps - wow.

You know, this is why I'm always harping about shareholder primacy and how it is literally destroying the habitability of the planet.

For example, what if Lachlan Murdoch's fiduciary responsibility was equally to shareholders AND to truth in news reporting? What if Mike Cavanaugh's fiduciary responsibility was equally to shareholders AND to truth in news reporting?

This would, in effect, be a 21st century Fairness Doctrine to replace the old one the snake Reagan killed in 1987. It would be effective because it would cover all publicly traded news, cable and network.

[Marcuse]

13. Remember that Obama nominated Garland to the Supremes to expose McConnell.

Obama knew any nominee was DOA anyway so he forced the reliably cynical GOP to stonewall Garland, against whom it had no plausible non partisan objection, without a hearing.

Whatever his evident virtues, Garland was another white male who, as a 63-year-old moderate, could not promise decades as a liberal warrior.
[link:https://www.npr.org/2018/06/29/624467256/what-happened-with-merrick-garland-in-2016-and-why-it-matters-now|

[LetMyPeopleVote]

14. 'Confidential' in name only: Merrick Garland's delicate decision to release the Hur report

In theory, the attorney general could have kept the report secret. In practice, he had only one option. If AG Garland did not release the Hur report, it was going to be either leaked or disclosed by the GOP in a hearing which would give the report far greater exposure and coverage.

Link to tweet

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/09/garland-decision-release-hur-report-00140806

The White House is livid over the Justice Department’s release of a special counsel report that painted a devastating portrait of Joe Biden. But Attorney General Merrick Garland’s decision to release it was a foregone conclusion — and anything short of publicizing the full report would have been worse.....

In practice, though, burying or censoring the report would have been untenable, former Justice Department leaders say.

They described a high-stakes calculus for both Garland and Hur informed by previous politically sensitive investigations: Special counsel reports have always been made public in recent years, and Garland would have been slammed by Republicans and the press if he tried to keep this one under wraps. Hur, meanwhile, clearly understood that political reality, so the harsh language he included was exactly what he expected the public to see.....

While the DOJ regulations used to appoint special counsels call for their final reports to be confidential and Hur labeled his as such, in recent years it has become customary for attorneys general — facing political pressure — to vow to release them publicly to the extent the law allows.

Despite the caterwauling from the White House this week, the conclusion of Hur’s probe was sure to draw a flurry of Freedom of Information Act requests and lawsuits from news organizations and Biden’s political foes. House Republicans could also have subpoenaed the report and related records. The letter Biden’s lawyers sent to Hur indicates transcripts exist of the prosecutor’s interviews with Biden, so the memory lapses Hur cited may have become public whether Hur had colorfully characterized them or not......

And while some Justice Department veterans said the buck stops with Garland, others argued that the attorney general had no choice but to release the report Hur delivered. Hur and his team likely would have understood that their words would become public, even though the report was labeled “confidential.”

“Mr. Hur’s report had to be released unedited lest the attorney general were to be accused of protecting President Biden,” Rossi said.

Even if the full report was not leaked, the report would had eventually come out when Comer or Gym Jordan subpoenaed Garland, Hur and the report itself. Disclosure of the full report would have been a bigger deal than releasing the report in full this far in advance of the general election.