On Monday, three committee chairmen in the House of Representatives demanded that the Department of Justice (DOJ) hand over any recordings of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s interview with Joe Biden.
According to Axios, the request was made in a letter written by Chairmen James Comer (R-Ky.) of the Oversight Committee, Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) of the Judiciary Committee, and Jason Smith (R-Mo.) of the Ways and Means Committee. Interest in obtaining video or audio recordings of the interview itself has spiked following Hur’s written report, which documented Biden’s clear mental problems and cognitive decline, including a “poor memory.”
While the DOJ has initially refused to hand over any further information from the investigation, since the affair “has now concluded,” the GOP has said that it needs such evidence as part of its ongoing impeachment inquiry against Biden. Republicans are currently in negotiations with Hur to testify before Congress as soon as March.
The letter by the three chairman set a deadline for the DOJ to hand over the requested evidence by February 19th. A DOJ spokesman confirmed that the agency had received the letter, but refused to give any further comment.
Hur’s investigation was announced last January in response to the discovery of hundreds of classified documents in Biden’s possession at both his home in Wilmington, Delaware and his offices at a University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) think tank in Washington, D.C. Hur ultimately declined to recommend formal charges against Biden, noting that if the case were to go to trial, Biden would likely attempt to escape conviction by presenting himself as a “sympathetic, well meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
On Monday, House Democrats released their own memo pushing back on the findings of Hur’s report and Republicans’ subsequent efforts to get more information, with a spokesman claiming that “Republicans’ allegations have been roundly disproven by the mountain of exculpatory evidence uncovered in their 13 month long ‘investigation.’”
Following the release of the report, Biden held an unexpected evening press conference to refute the Special Counsel’s claims and to insist that he had a strong memory, only to commit several more severe gaffes at the conference; most notably, he confused the Presidents of Mexico and Egypt and said that Mexico borders Israel, and also forgot the name of the church from which his late son Beau had received his rosary.
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