CNN’s Tapper to Schiff: Hur Report On Biden’s Mental Decline ‘Pretty Accurate’

CNN host Jake Tapper confronted Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., about his “relentlessly harsh” criticism of Special Counsel Robert Hur and his report on President Biden during a segment on Sunday, highlighting that the report was “pretty accurate.”
On Thursday, Tapper referenced Schiff’s questioning of President-elect Donald Trump’s Attorney General nominee Pam Bondi. Fox News reported that this discussion occurred in the context of Bondi’s assertion that most Americans no longer trust the Justice Department (DOJ).
Schiff attributed public skepticism of the DOJ to Republicans “trashing” the institution, but Tapper noted that Democrats, including Schiff, had also criticized the department in the past.
“President Biden gave a pretty harsh assessment of the investigation into his son Hunter,” Tapper said. “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.’”
Schiff defended his criticism, stating, “I was critical of that for good reason. 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,” he claimed, dismissing the notion that Hur’s assessment was “personal” despite it being based on interactions with Biden and widely seen as accurate.
Schiff added, “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.”
The California senator shifted blame to Republicans, accusing them of conducting a “multi-year campaign” to portray the DOJ as part of the “deep state.” Tapper, however, offered context for Hur’s comments before steering the conversation 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.
Hur’s February report determined that Biden knowingly retained classified materials in violation of the law. However, the report ultimately concluded that Biden’s diminished mental capacity rendered prosecution inadvisable.
“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 stated in the report.
In a House hearing in March, Schiff launched a scathing attack on Hur, accusing him of bias.
“I want to go back to your opening statement in which you said that you did not disparage the president in your report, but of course, you did disparage the president,” Schiff argued. “You disparaged him in terms you had to know would have a maximal political impact. You understood your report would be public, right?”
Schiff 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 findings and his decision not to press charges, though he faced criticism from Republicans for concluding that Biden had committed crimes but opting against prosecution.