That was his first response to Hur’s report, too.
“The Biden Documents Case is 100 times different and more severe than mine,” a statement from the former president read, in part. “I did nothing wrong, and I cooperated far more. What Biden did is outrageously criminal — He had 50 years of documents, 50 times more than I had, and ‘WILLFULLY RETAINED’ them. I was covered by the Presidential Records Act, Secret Service was always around, and GSA delivered the documents.”
Even without Hur’s report, these claims are obviously false. But Hur’s report specifically contrasted the two situations, in a way that is indisputably unfavorable for Trump.
On Tuesday, Hur appeared before the House Judiciary Committee to answer questions about his report. Multiple Republicans on the committee suggested that Hur’s failure to obtain an indictment against Biden was somehow a contradiction on the part of the Justice Department. Over and over, it was suggested that there was no significant difference in the actions undertaken by Biden and Trump and, therefore, that either both or neither deserved indictment.
But while Republicans were broadly familiar with Hur’s assessment of Biden’s actions, they seemed to have missed the aforementioned contrast.
The comparison came as Hur was explaining why he was not recommending charges in Biden’s case.
“It is not our role to assess the criminal charges pending against Mr. Trump, but several material distinctions between Mr. Trump’s case and Mr. Biden’s are clear,” the report reads. “Unlike the evidence involving Mr. Biden, the allegations set forth in the indictment of Mr. Trump, if proven, would present serious aggravating facts.”
“Most notably,” it continues, “after being given multiple chances to return classified documents and avoid prosecution, Mr. Trump allegedly did the opposite. According to the indictment, he not only refused to return the documents for many months, but he also obstructed justice by enlisting others to destroy evidence and then to lie about it.” In contrast, the report continues, Biden cooperated fully.
Hur uses the careful language of allegations, as he and we should. But the evidence bolstering those allegations is robust. What’s understood about Trump’s case demonstrates months of effort by the U.S. government to reclaim material — and months of stonewalling or incomplete responses from Trump’s camp. In early June 2022, his attorneys attested that all material with classification markings had been returned to the government; two months later, the FBI found more than 100 at Mar-a-Lago.
It is — and has always been — about Trump’s failure to respond to the government’s demands more than what he had, as Hur notes. That Trump allegedly shared documents with people or allegedly tried to hide evidence are icing on that cake.
Hur didn’t rebut all of the claims Trump has made about his actions, nor could he, but suffice it to say that Trump’s claims are false. Take Trump’s post-report social media post. Trump had scores of documents in his possession; Biden, far fewer. Hur did accuse Biden of willfully retaining the documents, but the available evidence makes very clear that Trump willfully retained documents of his own. (The infamous photo of documents arrayed on the floor at Mar-a-Lago were ones that were recovered from the office where he entertained guests.)
Hur’s report debunks other elements of Trump’s rhetoric about Biden’s handling of documents as well. For example, Trump has repeatedly mentioned that Biden had boxes stored at an office in D.C.’s Chinatown neighborhood — suggesting ridiculously that this perhaps indicated that Biden was sharing classified material with Chinese actors. The Hur report establishes that Biden didn’t pack the boxes sent to that transition office and that most of the material stored there was never unpacked before moving on to his permanent office at the Penn Biden Center offices closer to the White House. In fact, Biden didn’t work out of that office regularly but did “come by occasionally for meetings.”
But of course, there was never any evidence to suggest that the Chinatown office was suspicious anyway, beyond its location in a neighborhood with a name that included the word “China.” Similarly, there was never reason to think that Biden’s retention of documents marked as classified was significantly comparable to Trump’s.
While Hur’s report certainly provided other grist for Trump’s political efforts (such as his descriptions of Biden’s memory), it cauterized the idea that Biden might join Trump in facing criminal charges. And it goes further, explaining why Trump, unlike Biden, did.
Trump, naturally, ignored that part of the report. So, it seems, did his allies on Capitol Hill.
