Jake Tapper drops the truth on Adam Schiff for attacking Robert Hur over Biden's memory problems: 'Actually broken the law'

CNN anchor Jake Tapper called out Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) to his face on Tuesday for attacking special counsel Robert Hur.

What happened between Hur and Schiff?

During Hur's testimony on Capitol Hill, Schiff accused Hur of inserting his own "personal, prejudicial, subjective opinion" of President Joe Biden's memory in his report to help Republicans. The premise of Schiff's lecture was that he believes Hur should have made political calculations to help Democrats.

But Hur fought back.

"Congressman, what you are suggesting is that I shape, sanitize, omit portions of my reasoning and explanations to the Attorney General for political reasons," Hur told Schiff.

What did Tapper say?

Tapper confronted Schiff later in the day over his "outrage."

"The basic argument you're making is that by calling President Biden a sympathetic, well-meaning old man, elderly man with a poor memory — which is how [Hur] thought he would come across to a jury — that that's political. But what part of that construct is inaccurate?" Tapper asked.

Schiff, however, refused to answer the question.

Instead, he claimed Hur vilified Biden's reputation by engaging in "a subjective, generalized — essentially political — assessment that is fodder during a campaign year." Schiff, without evidence, repeated his accusation that Hur was motivated by politics.

"This was deliberate. It was as if Hur decided, 'There's not enough evidence to prosecute him. So, I'm going to politically slime him instead,'" Schiff claimed.

But Tapper wasn't buying what Schiff was selling, and he used Hur's own testimony to disprove Schiff's complaints. Specifically, Tapper highlighted Hur's reasoning for not prosecuting Biden, which was not a lack of evidence but a belief that he could not win at trial.

Tapper explained:

What [Hur] would say is, "I had to explain why I wasn't prosecuting him. ... I'm not going to take this case before a jury because I don't know that we could win it. This person is going to seem sympathetic or I can't prove beyond a reasonable doubt, etc."

Part of what he said in his testimony today was that we thought [Biden] did things willfully, but President Biden explained things that he forgot or whatever, and we couldn't necessarily impugn the claim of — that he just innocently forgot. We couldn't do that. That was another thing that he said.

Schiff, however, refused to budge. He claimed Hur was "calculated" and "deliberate" in his decision to attack Biden, arguing he should have made political considerations to protect Biden.

Finally, Tapper had enough.

"I just think that [Hur] felt like he had a special obligation to explain why he wasn't going to prosecute somebody that he thought had actually broken the law," the CNN anchor fact checked.

Don't be fooled: Schiff, a seasoned lawyer, is playing political games.

Despite his outrage, Schiff knows that Hur had to consider Biden's mental state because that is the only way he could determine if Biden "willfully" retained classified documents. And, as Hur explained at the hearing, Biden is the one responsible for making his memory an issue.

Hur told lawmakers:

The evidence and the president himself put his memory squarely at issue. We interviewed the president and asked him about his recorded statement, “I just found all the classified stuff downstairs.” He told us that he didn’t remember saying that to his ghostwriter. He also said he didn’t remember finding any classified material in his home after his vice presidency. And he didn’t remember anything about how classified documents about Afghanistan made their way into his garage.

Indeed, top Justice Department officials disagreed that Hur's language about Biden's memory is gratuitous or otherwise out of line with DOJ policies.

Hur found evidence that Biden broke the law, yet he had to explain why he chose not to prosecute. That reason, Hur explained Tuesday, is because he believed he could not convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that Biden willfully retained classified documents. Hur came to that conclusion because he believed Biden would present himself to a jury just as he presented himself to Hur during their interview last October: as "a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory."

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