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The Legal Analysis Trump Shared During Robert Hur's Testimony

Rebecca Downs
Rebecca Downs  |  March 12, 2024 8:30 PM

As Madeline and Katie have been covering, Special Counsel Robert Hur came before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday to speak to his investigation into President Joe Biden's mishandling of classified documents. During the hearing, former and potentially future President Donald Trump shared legal analysis as well as clips pointing to a double standard. 

Among the posts he shared included insight from Andrew McCarthy, a legal analyst and columnist at National Review.

"For decades, Biden hoarded highly sensitive intelligence, including removing it from safekeeping on Capitol Hill, which senators well know they are not allowed to do. Biden, moreover, had many private locations — homes and offices — and irresponsibly spread the mounds of classified documents across them," Trump's post quoted McCarthy as saying. "It’s not like he had a single storage area, and it’s not like he made real efforts to keep his various storage locations secure — to deny access to people who were not authorized to read classified documents. Finally, Biden was so reckless and his offenses were so persistent, that he could not keep track of the classified documents he had retained." 

The post looked to no doubt draw a strong contrast against Biden and Trump, with only the latter being charged for mishandling classified documents. Trump also spoke out against such hypocrisy last month, when Hur's report found that Biden was too old to be charged. In his opening statement, Hur was clear about the role Biden's memory played, and how Biden himself made it an issue. 

Another post from Trump quoted McCarthy as speaking even more so to differences, particularly to the kind of authority Biden had, or more specifically, did not have.

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"As president, Trump was undeniably authorized to keep classified intelligence in his possession…Biden, on the contrary, was not authorized to possess national-defense information outside a secure Capitol Hill location while he was in the Senate. Yet he took documents from their secure storage and kept them at various private locations, going back decades," McCarthy also said. "He was well aware that he was in possession of classified information in unauthorized places, but he maintained it there so he could easily refer to it. This is why Hur concluded that his offense was willful."

McCarthy's own social media feed has been full of pieces he has written wrote for NRO about the subject, as well as one from Dan McLaughlin not long after the Tuesday hearing began. 

Last month McCarthy wrote such pieces as "On Hur Report, Democrats Shoot at the Wrong Target" and "Advice for Biden: Pardon Trump on the Classified Documents" in response to the release of Hur's report, which he recently shared once more.

Mor recently leading up to Tuesday's hearing, McCarthy also wrote about "The Biden DOJ Special Counsel’s Indifference to Trump’s Fair-Trial Rights," about "Cutting through the Fog of Anti-Trump Lawfare," and how "For Purposes of Testimony, It Doesn’t Matter That Robert Hur Is Now a Former Justice Department Prosecutor."

Another post that Trump shared included an exchange at the hearing between Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-ND), as Hur reminded the congressman that classified documents were found in unsecure locations such as at the Penn Biden Center, in his garage, and in his basement den. 

Such posts came after Trump also posted before the hearing another reminder about Biden's mishandling of classified documents, with the former president arguing he had authority to do so under the Presidential Records Act. 

"Big day in Congress for the Biden Documents Hoax. He had many times more documents, including classified documents, than I, or any other president, had. He had them all over the place, with ZERO supervision or security. He does NOT come under the Presidential Records Act, I DO," Trump's post read in part.

"The DOJ gave Biden, and virtually every other person and President, a free pass. Me, I’m still fighting!!! MAGA," his post concluded, further expressing the unfair double standard, which has also been highlighted in the transcripts of Hur's report.