The Washington Examiner reports that parallels are being drawn between Special Counsel Robert Hur's decision not to prosecute President Joe Biden and former FBI Director James Comey's efforts to prevent Hillary Clinton from being prosecuted.
In case you missed it, this past week, Hur - the man tasked with investigating whether Biden unlawfully mishandled classified materials - released a report indicating that he has chosen not to prosecute Biden. Hur, however, did not decline to prosecute because Biden did not commit a crime.
Hur, in fact, indicated that he "uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified information after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen."
The reason Hurr decided not to prosecute Biden, however, is because, in his opinion, "[i]t would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him—by then a former president well into his eighties—of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness."
Hur, in the report, makes the case that Biden is "a sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory."
Some Democrats are now trying to claim that there is a parallel here between Hur's investigation of Biden and Comey's investigation of Clinton. The claim is that both investigations occurred during an election year and that both investigations were designed to hurt their respective election campaigns.
The Examiner reports, "The potential political damage from the report infuriated Democrats, who claimed the report was comparable to Comey’s actions in 2016 and prompted Republicans to question once again Biden’s ability to serve another four years in the White House."
The Examiner goes on to recall the situation with Comey.
The outlet reports:
On Oct. 28, 2016, Comey announced a surprise decision to reopen an investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server. The news came less than two weeks before Election Day, which Clinton and other Democrats claimed helped lead to her defeat to former President Donald Trump. It also followed a July 2016 assessment from Comey, in which he slammed Clinton for being “extremely careless” but did not recommend charges. The October surprise did not ultimately result in any new charges against Clinton. The embattled FBI director later apologized for the incident in a memoir he wrote in April 2018.
From another perspective, it could be argued that both Comey and Hur actually helped Clinton and Biden.
After all, Comey and Hur's actions prevented Biden and Clinton from being prosecuted, despite the fact that, in both cases, there appeared to be very solid grounds for prosecution.
There is no denying the fact, however, that Hur's report hurts Biden.
A main concern for the Democrats is that Biden is going to lose reelection because too many Americans believe that he no longer has the mental fitness needed for the job.
