At a briefing on Friday, Ian Sams, the White House’s spokesperson for oversight and investigations, announced that President Joe Biden will appoint a task force to review the handling of classified documents during presidential transitions.
The action is part of the administration’s response to Justice Department special counsel Robert Hur’s report about Biden’s mishandling of classified documents — even as White House officials condemned Hur’s comments about Biden’s age and memory as “gratuitous and inappropriate.”
The special counsel’s report found that Biden "willfully" retained and disclosed highly classified materials when he was a private citizen, but determined that criminal charges were not warranted in the case.
Sams said that Biden will soon name the task force “to ensure that there are better processes in place” in the handoff between presidential administrations when it comes to classified information.
In the report, Hur wrote that in a possible trial, “Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview with him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
Those comments sparked fury from Biden himself and a flurry of criticism from Democrats and advocates, while the president’s Republican opponents have argued a double-standard between this case and the felonies facing former President Donald Trump in a criminal probe over his alleged mishandling of classified documents, as well as calls for Biden’s resignation or removal over Hur’s comments about his memory and mental acuity.
Sams, for his part, said that he believes “the public is smart” and “they can see what is going on” when it comes to the characterizations in the report, which he charged are “wrong” and “inaccurate.”
“When the inevitable conclusion is that the facts and the evidence don’t support any charges, you’re left to wonder why this report spends time making gratuitous and inappropriate criticisms of the president,” Sams said.
Sams suggested that the political environment led Hur, who was appointed as U.S. attorney by former President Donald Trump, to include the comments. “There’s an environment that we are in, that generates a ton of pressure, because you have congressional Republicans, other Republicans, attacking prosecutors that they don’t like,” he said.
Asked whether the White House would release a copy of the transcript of Biden's interview with Hur that could dispute Hur's characterizations, Sams said parts of it were classified, but that if parts of it could be declassified, “we’ll take a look at that and make a determination.”