A former Department of Justice official, Xochitl Hinojosa, called out members of the Democratic Party on Tuesday for “lying to everybody” about former President Joe Biden when it came to Robert Hur’s report, which was dismissed as “gratuitous” at the time.
“I was at the Justice Department at the time when we released the Hur report, and he was, the entire White House infrastructure at the time, was calling the report gratuitous, and said that Rob Hur should have never called him ‘a well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.’ And every Democratic pundit, many reporters, were out there saying that it was inappropriate for Rob Hur to say that. And the reality is, the whole reason why he put that in is because it was his whole reason not to prosecute,” Hinojosa, who worked as the Director of Public affairs at the DOJ, said during CNN’s “NewsNight.”
Audio from Hur’s interview with Biden was released on Friday, and showed the former president struggling with words and key memories during the interview. Axios reporter Alex Thompson was on the panel as well to discuss the reporting about the former president from his new book, “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” which he published with CNN host Jake Tapper.
“So it’s really infuriating to hear this happening in the Spring of 2024, around the time that the Hur report was released and certain aspects in Alex and Jake‘s reporting really talk about the timeframe being Fall of 2023, whenever he did his interview with Rob Hur, as well as early 2024, when was the release of the report. And so it’s just, it’s really frustrating, I think as a Democratic Party, hearing now that they were lying to everybody, and not only were they lying to everybody, but they were bashing their own cabinet when it came to the Hur report,” Hinojosa added.
Xochitl Hinojosa, a former public affairs official, called out Democrats on Tuesday over “lying to everybody” about the Hur report. (Screenshot/CNN)
Biden officials such as Karine Jean-Pierre and Ian Sams, as well as former Vice President Kamala Harris and former DHS Secretary Mayorkas, deemed the Hur report “gratuitous” after it was released, because Hur declined to charge the former president over the mishandling of classified documents due to his memory lapses.
“The reality is, that report, that part of the report does not live in reality. It just doesn’t, it is gratuitous,” Jean-Pierre said at the time, responding to a question about Biden’s memory. “It is unacceptable and it does not live in reality.”
Democratic Reps. Ro Khanna, Jamie Raskin, and Daniel Goldman also deemed the report unnecessary and gratuitous at the time.
Audio from the interview showed that Biden admitted he kept documents about Afghanistan for “posterity’s sake.”
Former President Joe Biden talks to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House, Monday, September 2, 2024, in Washington, after returning from Rehoboth Beach, Del. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
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When asked about a classified document on Afghanistan found at his lake house, Biden said at first he wasn’t sure how the document got there, but then admitted, “I guess I wanted to hang on to it for posterity’s sake.”
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Fox News’ Brie Stimson and Brooke Singman contributed to this report.
