President Joe Biden and Special Counsel Robert Hur
JONATHAN TURLEY: I would be very concerned about a client who was informed of a pending investigation and destroyed the key material evidence. The other interesting anomaly in this is that if they wanted to pursue this aggressively, as they did with the Trump investigations, we've seen prosecutors really pressure witnesses like this, saying that we may indict you for obstruction, to get their cooperation, to see if they have more evidence to offer. Instead, they did what they did with the president. They sort of convinced themselves that there was no reason to seriously pursue criminal charges. And it's very hard to square with what the report says. This report establishes all of the elements of crimes. They could have easily, on these facts, charged the president with mishandling of classified material, willfully retaining classified material, showing that material to others. That should sound familiar, because those are dozens of counts against President Trump. And that's the reason why Hur had to go back to this. He's just too sympathetic to prosecute, because otherwise you're really left wondering, well, OK, why don't you say you should prosecute him after he leaves office?
The New York Times editorial board claimed that Biden's press conference in response to Special Counsel Robert Hur's report made voters' trust in the president's mental strength worse. (Reuters / Getty)
Mark Zwonitzer — who collaborated with Biden on his memoir Promise Me, Dad — erased audio files in his possession that contained "significant evidentiary value," Hur's report revealed.
Zwonitzer admitted to the FBI that he "was aware that there was an investigation" when he deleted the evidence.
Hur began investigating Biden's improper retention of classified records last year.
Those records included classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, among other records related to national security and foreign policy, which Hur said implicated "sensitive intelligence sources and methods."
"When asked whether he deleted the recordings to try and prevent investigators from obtaining them, Zwonitzer said that he did not," the report states.
It added, "Our investigation [...] did not uncover any evidence that Zwonitzer had been in contact with anyone about his decision to delete the recordings."
Hur will not recommend criminal charges against Biden for mishandling classified documents, despite finding "evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen."
Comment: Robert Hur may be a special council, but his real role is to protect the Bidens: