New York Post, March 13, 2023

Dems turn Biden-documents hearing into 3 Stooges theater

Special Counsel Robert Hur was in the hot seat for four hours Tuesday as President Biden’s congressional allies sought to destroy him for doubting Biden’s intellect.

They had no case. And instead, they turned the event into Three Stooges-caliber theater.

Hur’s report last month concluded that Biden had “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials” — violations of federal law. But Hur said that prosecuting him would be dicey because jurors could view Biden as an  “elderly man with poor memory.”

The House Judiciary Committee hearing on Hur’s report was only about “Republicans trying to re-elect the former white supremacist-in-chief,” according to Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.).

Fixating on Biden’s document shenanigans could aid Trump and cause the worldwide triumph of tyranny, wailed Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.). Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) derided Hur as a Republican bootlicker hoping to get a prize appointment if Trump is re-elected.

One Democrat after another put Hur into a headlock and jammed words into his mouth.

When Hur objected to Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) claiming his report exonerated Biden, she cut him off: “Mr. Hur, it is my time.”

Democrats, veering toward full “Manchurian Candidate,” seemed ready to recite with glazed eyes: “Joe Biden is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.”

Biden needs plenty of sycophants because of his hypocrisy, legal violations and brazen falsehoods.

After the FBI raided Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home to seize classified documents in August 2022, Biden said he was stunned that “anyone could be that irresponsible.”

After Hur’s report came out, Biden declared, “I did not share classified information.” Biden claimed that all the classified stuff “in my home was in filing cabinets that were either locked or able to be locked.” But Hur testified that those claims were “inconsistent with our findings.”

Biden’s classified documents were found at the Penn Biden Center, in Biden’s Delaware garage, his basement den and third floor den, his main floor office, the University of Delaware and at the Biden Institute, some in open boxes.

The 40 felony charges that Special Counsel Jack Smith filed against Trump for classified-document violations were perpetually showcased by Democratic members.

But no one explained how Trump’s alleged offenses after January 2021 retroactively exonerated Biden’s violations stretching back to the 1970s.

Republicans wondered at what point in his life Biden became too clueless to be responsible for violating federal law.

House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) explained that Biden knew the rules on classified information but broke them because he was writing a book” and pocketing an $8 million.

“Joe Biden had 8 million reasons to break the rules!” Jordan exclaimed.

Hur’s report stated that Biden also wrongfully retained classified documents to “buttress his legacy as a world leader” in his ghostwritten book.

Some Republicans were confounded that the special counsel chose not to recommend criminal charges.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) groused that Hur chose to “apply this ‘senile cooperator’ theory that because Joe Biden cooperated and the elevator didn’t go to the top floor, you don’t think you’d get a conviction.”

Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC) was perturbed that Hur let the president off the hook by claiming Biden didn’t recognize that a “confidential” marking meant a document was classified — even though Biden stated that he knew that during the interview.

(Déjà vu: The FBI let Hillary Clinton off the same hook in 2016 when she claimed she thought a “C” marking on government documents referred to alphabetical order, not classification status.)

Biden had falsely accused Hur of raising the issue of the death of Beau Biden, but, as the transcript makes clear, it was the president who repeatedly mentioned it — and he was indeed unaware of the year of his son died.

The president’s attention wandered during the questioning, including when he started to make childlike noises like his beloved old Corvette. No wonder the White House intervened to seek to censor the report’s comment on Biden’s mental capacity.

Biden had at least one shining moment of candor and competence during the Hur interview: “We over-classify everything. . . . And 99.9% of it has nothing to do with anything I couldn’t pick up and read out loud to the public.”

Both Biden and Trump — along with Hillary Clinton, Mike Pence and busloads of other politicians as yet unnamed — have been caught in a bureaucratic tar pit created to enable Washington to blindfold Americans.

The best case outcome of both the Biden and Trump classification controversies would be a radical rollback of pointless federal secrecy.

James Bovard’s latest book is “Last Rights: The Death of American Liberty.”