Judicial Watch: Justice Dept. Records Detail Biden White House Pressure on Special Counsel Hur

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today it received from the U.S. Department of Justice in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit 49 pages of records detailing pressure asserted by Biden White House and Joe Biden’s personal lawyers on Special Counsel Robert Hur regarding the October 2023 interviews of then-President Biden in the criminal investigation into his theft, retention, and disclosure of classified records. Non-disclosure agreements signed by the president’s lawyers are also included in the records.

Judicial Watch filed a July 2024 FOIA lawsuit against the Department of Justice for all communications about the Hur report with the Office of the White House Counsel and Biden’s personal lawyers (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:24-cv-02179)).

Judicial Watch has several ongoing FOIA lawsuits about Biden’s document scandals and the related unprecedented partisan prosecutorial and judicial abuses of former President Donald J. Trump.

In April 2025, Judicial Watch uncovered Justice Department records showing White House staffers suggesting edits to transcripts of President Biden’s interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur regarding his handling of secret documents.

In February 2025, a federal court ordered the Department of Justice to declare whether it intends to continue denying Judicial Watch’s request for the full audio of former President Joe Biden’s interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur. The Trump Justice Department has until May 20, 2025, to report its position on the release of the videotape.

In June 2024, the Biden administration was forced to admit that the transcripts of audio recordings of Biden’s interviews with Special Counsel Hur had been altered and are not accurate.

The new records include an October 18, 2023, letter, just a few days after Hur’s interviews of Biden, from Special Counsel to the President Richard Sauber and Biden’s personal attorney Bob Bauer to Hur, they express concerns about the release of the report:

At our meeting last Friday, we requested that you provide an overview of where matters stand in this case, particularly any remaining questions or concerns we should address. We also asked for the opportunity to discuss your expected report to the Attorney General at the conclusion of the investigation, including time to review it prior to its submission to the Attorney General. You advised us that you were not prepared to engage with these requests at that time but would take them under consideration.

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Moreover, to the extent that your report touches in any way upon procedures in this or prior administrations for the handling of sensitive national security information, your report will also be read with intense interest in every foreign capital. It could affect the national security interests of the United States in ways that none of us can anticipate.

An October 31, 2023, email from Sauber to the Special Counsel’s Office documents the repeated efforts by the Biden legal team to review the report before its release. The letter states:

In our October 18 letter to you, we asked to have the opportunity to review and comment on a draft of the “confidential” report that you are required to write under the Special Counsel regulations. We also noted that we would follow up on the subject of the Special Counsel’s “final report” requirement more broadly.

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At a minimum, the report should adhere to the kind of product contemplated by the Special Counsel regulations. As discussed, in contrast to the detailed independent counsel reports setting forth a “full and complete” description of their work, the Special Counsel regulations contemplate only that the Special Counsel will “explain[] the prosecution or declination decisions.” … We support your faithful fulfillment of this requirement. But, consistent with the Department’s description of a “limited” and “summary” product, … , the report should be economical. It should include the factual information necessary to the charging decision, but facts or events that are not essential to the decision have no place….

In a December 15, 2023, letter Sauber and Bauer reiterate the request and also ask for access to the classification review of the materials found and the return of the records of a personal nature to Biden.

In a January 3, 2024, letter Sauber and Bauer again reiterate the request for a pre-release review and express concern that the final report provide an “appropriate public presentation” of the facts of the case.

On January 5, 2024, “RKHSC,” (Robert K. Hur, special counsel) sends an email to Bauer and others discussing “nondisclosure agreement and certification.” The non-disclosure agreement and certification state:

NON-DISCLOSURE AGREEMENT

1. This agreement applies to the review by members of the White House Counsel’s Office and personal counsel of the report of the Special Counsel’s Office.
2. Review will be limited to the following people: Ed Siskel (White House Counsel), Richard Sauber (Special Counsel to the President), Rachel Cotton (Senior Counsel to the President), Robert Bauer (personal counsel), and Jennifer Miller (personal counsel). This agreement refers to this group collectively as “counsel.”

CERTIFICATION

By this certification, I affirm to the Department of Justice that I have and will continue to adhere to the terms of the attached non-disclosure agreement …

I understand that Title 18, United States Code, Section 1001, makes it a felony to knowingly and willfully make a materially false statement in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive branch of the Government of the United States.

On January 9, Bauer emails his and Jennifer Miller’s non-disclosure agreements and certifications to Hur and others.

In a February 5, 2024, letter to Hur, Sauber and Bauer outline their complaints about the draft report. The first concern they raise is the report’s characterization of Biden’s failing memory:

We do not believe that the report’s treatment of President Biden’s memory is accurate or appropriate. The report uses highly prejudicial language to describe a commonplace occurrence among witnesses: a lack of recall of years-old events. Such comments have no place in a Department of Justice report, particularly one that in the first paragraph announces that no criminal charges are “warranted” and that “the evidence does not establish Mr. Biden’s guilt.” If the evidence does not establish guilt, then discussing the jury impact of President Biden’s hypothetical testimony at a trial that will never occur is entirely superfluous.

“We are pleased to hear that the Trump Justice Department plans to release the Biden audio tapes in response to Judicial Watch’s FOIA lawsuit,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “These new records further show how desperate the Biden gang was to hide the full truth about Biden’s failing memory – and criminality.”

In the February 5, 2024, “Report of the Special Counsel on the Investigation Into Unauthorized Removal, Retention, and Disclosure of Classified Documents Discovered at Locations Including the Penn Biden Center and the Delaware Private Residence of President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.” Hur called Biden a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” and declined to charge Biden with a “serious felony:”

We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory. Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It 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.

Prior to the finalization of the report, the White House issued a letter to the Special Counsel’s office attacking the report’s “treatment of President Biden’s memory,” and added “there is ample evidence from your interview that the President did well in answering your questions …”

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Source: https://www.judicialwatch.org/records-detail-biden-pressure-on-special-counsel-hur/