Former President Joe Biden’s lawyers pressured the special counsel investigating the ex-commander in chief’s classified documents scandal to be “economical” in his report, arguing that the criminal probe could have national security implications, according to documents released Thursday.
The demands were made to special counsel Robert Hur in a series of October 2023 letters from Biden’s personal attorney Bob Bauer and former White House Special Counsel Richard Sauber.
The Biden legal team’s missives to Hur – sent months before the release of his scathing report on the former president’s handling of sensitive material – are among several previously unseen documents and emails obtained by Judicial Watch Thursday via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
“[T]o the extent that your report touches in any way upon procedures in this or prior administrations for the handling of sensitive national security information, your report will also be read with intense interest in every foreign capital,” Bauer and Sauber warned the special counsel in one Oct. 18, 2023, letter.
“It could affect the national security interests of the United States in ways that none of us can anticipate,” they added.
Bauer and Sauber noted in the letter that they had previously pushed for Hur to allow them “time to review” the report and “discuss” it before its release.
Days later, Sauber emails the special counsel’s office another letter demanding to see Hur’s findings – and once more tries to pressure the DOJ official.
“As you will see, based on the issues addressed in the letter, we are also reiterating our request to have the opportunity to review a draft of your report before it becomes public,” Sauber wrote in the Oct. 31, 2024 email. “We look forward to discussing these issues with you.”
In the attached letter, Sauber argues that Hur’s report shouldn’t give a “full and complete” picture of the criminal investigation.
“As discussed, in contrast to the detailed independent counsel reports setting forth a ‘full and complete’ description of their work, the Special Counsel regulations contemplate only that the Special Counsel will ‘explain the prosecution or declination decisions,’” Sauber wrote.
“We support your faithful fulfillment of this requirement,” he added. “But, consistent with the Department’s description of a ‘limited’ and ‘summary’ product, 64 Fed. Reg. at 37041, the report should be economical.”
“It should include the factual information necessary to the charging decision, but facts or events that are not essential to the decision have no place.”
Bauer and Sauber fired off more letters in December 2023 and January 2024, reiterating their requests for a pre-release review and expressing Biden’s concerns over what will be included.
“The appropriate public presentation of these and other issues in the Special Counsel’s report is unquestionably a legitimate concern for the President,” the lawyers wrote in the Jan. 3, 2024, letter to Hur. “Under these circumstances, the President has a responsibility to help ensure that the report is fair and entirely accurate.”
On Jan. 5, 2024, Hur gave in and sent Bauer an email with non-disclosure agreements that must be submitted to the DOJ to review the report.
Hur allowed Bauer, Sauber, former White House counsel Ed Siskel and Rachel Cotton and Biden’s personal counsel Jennifer Miller the opportunity to view the report after signing the NDAs.
Hur’s report was released the following month.
In his findings, the special counsel described Biden as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” and declined to charge the sitting president with a crime.
Hur noted that he considered “at trial, 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.”
“Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt,” he added. “It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him — by then a former president well into his eighties — of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”
