‘Rotten fruit thrown at you’: Robert Hur speaks out on vitriol after Biden report

The former special counsel who investigated Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents has said he is stunned at “the level of vitriol” that greeted him across the US’s political spectrum after he declined to prosecute the president yet portrayed him in a report as an “elderly man with a poor memory”.

“I knew it was going to be unpleasant” taking on the investigation, Robert Hur told The New Yorker in a lengthy interview Friday, more than a week after he appeared at a congressional hearing in which both Democrats and Republicans heavily criticized him. “But the level of vitriol – it’s hard to know exactly how intense that’s going to be until the rotten fruit is being thrown at you.”

Hur’s comments to the publication – his first media interview since his House testimony - largely centered on the Biden report, which he released in February. In it, he concluded that Biden’s handling of classified materials from his time as vice-president to Barack Obama did not warrant criminal charges.

Biden’s Democratic allies subsequently hailed that determination but excoriated Hur for throwing into the report a stinging opinion on the president’s memory, which Republicans seized on in their support of Donald Trump’s efforts to return to the White House in November.

Meanwhile, Republicans who were enthusiastic about Hur’s thoughts on Biden’s memory were simultaneously furious that he had refused to file charges against the president. Their preferred candidate, Donald Trump, on the other hand, faces more than 80 criminal charges for not only his handling of classified materials after his presidency – but also for attempting to subvert his 2020 electoral defeat to Biden and in connection with hush-money payments.

Tensions for Hur hit a fever