President Joe Biden's public statements about classified documents and special counsel Robert Hur's investigation into them are "inconsistent" with the evidence discovered, the lead investigator told the House Judiciary Committee in public testimony Tuesday.
"That is inconsistent with the findings based on the evidence in my report," Hur told Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who asked whether Biden was telling the truth sharing classified information with his book's ghost writer.
Gaetz noted that Hur's response was carefully crafted.
"So, it's a lie is what regular people would say, right?" Gaetz responded.
Hur did not respond but smiled and looked down before Gaetz presented another public statement, which Hur called "inconsistent with the findings of our investigation."
"Another lie people might say, right," Gaetz shot back.
Gaetz pressed Hur on his "senile cooperator theory," which Hur admitted in his opening statement was the necessary qualifier for why he concluded — despite the evidence — a jury would not find Biden guilty because of he was an old, well-meaning man with a poor memory.
But Gaetz also noted Hur's report failed to mention the Penn Biden Center's ties to Chinese-based funding and the fact Hur did not seek to prosecute the Biden ghost writer for deleting evidence that might have shown some culpability on sharing classified documents after learning Hur's appointment as a special counsel.
"That is reflected in the report," Hur admitted, noting the ghost writer did have transcripts of the deleted evidence.
Gaetz concluded his five minutes, noting the ghost writer "should have been charged, wasn't — Biden and Trump should have been treated equally. They weren't,
"And that is the double standard that I think a lot of Americans are concerned about," Gaetz concluded.
Over five hours of interviews, Biden repeatedly told a special counsel he never meant to retain classified information after he left the vice presidency, but he was at times fuzzy about dates and said he was unfamiliar with the paper trail for some of the sensitive documents he handled.
A transcript of the Biden interviews was made public Tuesday, just as Hur went before the House Judiciary Committee to face question.
"What I wrote is what I believe the evidence shows, and what I expect jurors would perceive and believe," Hur said in his opening statement. "I did not sanitize my explanation. Nor did I disparage the president unfairly."
While Biden fumbled some details in his interview, the full transcript could raise questions about Hur's depiction of the 81-year-old president as having "significant limitations" on his memory. It paints a more textured picture of his discussions with prosecutors, filling out some of the gaps left by Hur's accounting of the exchanges.
In other questioning, Hur declined a question from Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., about promising not to accept an appointment from Trump in a future administration.
"I'm not here to offer any opinions about" future hypotheticals, Hur said, expounding on a prior response to Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., about having "no such aspirations" to further a potential Trump administration appointment.
Hur is currently out of government, returning to his private law practice after serving as special counsel in this investigation.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.