Topline
Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Robert Hur Thursday to serve as an independent special counsel investigating classified White House documents found at President Joe Biden’s home and office, naming a former U.S. attorney with broad experience at the Justice Department—including in classified document cases.
Robert Hur, then the DOJ’s Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General, speaks at the White House in … [+]
Key Facts
Hur now works in private practice at the law firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, after previously serving as the U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland during the Trump Administration and the first few weeks of Biden’s term, from April 2018 to February 2021.
His work in Maryland included cases involving public corruption, fraud, violent crime, national security, gangs and the opioid crisis, according to the Justice Department.
Of particular relevance to the documents investigation, Hur worked on multiple cases involving classified information, including prosecutions of National Security Agency employees and contractors who stole and retained classified materials at their homes (the NSA’s headquarters is in northern Maryland).
He previously served as the principal associate deputy attorney general at the DOJ from 2017 to 2018, reporting to Trump-era Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein, after working as a federal prosecutor in Maryland and as an aide to the DOJ’s criminal division chief Christopher Wray, who now serves as FBI director.
Hur clerked for former Supreme Court Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist after attending Stanford for law school and Harvard for his undergraduate degree.
Since moving to private practice, Hur has worked on cases involving such issues as white-collar crime and regulatory issues, according to his firm.
What To Watch For
Hur has not yet started his work as special counsel and the DOJ is still working to get his investigation underway, the Wall Street Journal reports. It’s still unclear how long the probe could take or what the scope of it will be, and what laws the agency believes Biden may have violated by having the documents in his possession.
Key Background
Classified documents from the Obama-Biden Administration—reportedly including intelligence involving Iran, Ukraine and the United Kingdom—were first found at the Biden Penn Center in Washington in November, and additional White House documents were later found at Biden’s home in Delaware in December and January. Garland announced Thursday he was appointing Hur after previously asking U.S. Attorney John Lausch to review the matter and help him decide whether to appoint a special counsel, which the AG said Lausch recommended he do. As special counsel, Hur will have more independence than a typical prosecutor and won’t be supervised by DOJ leadership, though Garland can override his decisions as long as he notifies Congress. Republicans had been publicly urging Garland to appoint a special counsel, after the AG had previously appointed a different special counsel to oversee a separate investigation into former President Donald Trump bringing thousands of White House documents back to Mar-A-Lago. That prompted accusations among Republicans of hypocrisy if the DOJ didn’t investigate this situation as well—even as circumstances between the two cases are substantially different, given that Biden immediately turned the documents over to the National Archives, while the FBI had to search Mar-A-Lago and recover documents itself after Trump failed to turn them over voluntarily or in response to a subpoena.
Surprising Fact
Politico notes that Hur’s law firm is the same one where U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon previously worked before Trump appointed her to the federal bench. Cannon became a central figure in the separate investigation involving Trump’s Mar-A-Lago documents, after she ordered a third-party special master be appointed to review the seized materials. Her ruling, widely criticized by legal experts, was later overturned, including at the Supreme Court.
Further Reading
Special Counsel Appointed To Investigate Biden’s Handling Of Classified Material (Forbes)
How The Biden Documents Differ From The Trump Records Found At Mar-A-Lago (Forbes)
Second Set Of Classified Documents Found At Biden’s Home (Forbes)
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2023/01/12/who-is-robert-hur-the-special-counsel-investigating-bidens-classified-documents/