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White House objected to Justice Department over Biden special counsel report before release
Washington — Lawyers for the White House and President Biden angrily objected to a Justice Department official over several aspects of special counsel Robert Hur’s report on the president’s handling of classified information the day before it was released, according to a newly revealed letter.
Hur’s report, issued last week, said Mr. Biden’s retention of classified material after leaving the vice presidency in 2017 did not warrant criminal charges. But the 345-page report also said Mr. Biden’s handling of sensitive information, some of which appeared in entries in his personal journals, was “totally irresponsible.” Hur’s team of investigators said they believed Mr. Biden would “present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” as part of their justification for their decision that charges weren’t warranted.
In a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland on Feb. 7, White House counsel Edward Siskel and the president’s personal attorney Bob Bauer registered their objection to “certain aspects of [Hur’s] draft report that violate Department of Justice policy and practice by pejoratively characterizing uncharged conduct.” Politico published a copy of the letter on Thursday, and a person familiar with the exchange confirmed its contents to CBS News. The two attorneys appealed directly to the special counsel in a separate letter days earlier.
“No law enforcement purpose”
The Feb. 7 message to Garland compared Hur’s characterizations to infamous comments made by FBI Director James Comey in 2016, when he declined to bring charges against Hillary Clinton over her use of a private email server but criticized her conduct as “extremely careless.” Siskel and Bauer noted the Justice Department’s inspector general later determined that Comey’s comments violated “long-standing Department practice and protocol” about discussing accusations without filing charges.
The attorneys zeroed in on Hur’s commentary on Mr. Biden’s memory and said the report went too far in drawing conclusions about his mental capacity.
“The Special Counsel can certainly and properly note that the President lacked memory of a specific fact or series of events. But his report goes further to include allegations that the President has a failing memory in a general sense, an allegation that has no law enforcement purpose,” they wrote, noting that investigators reached those conclusions based on five hours of interviews with the president. “A global and pejorative judgment on the President’s powers of recollection in general is uncalled for and unfounded.”
The attorneys wrote that “we would be remiss if we did not forcefully object to aspects of Mr. Hur’s report that openly, obviously, and blatantly violate Department policy and practice as well as the bipartisan consensus on the appropriate limitations on Special Counsel reports.”
The next day, Bradley Weinsheimer, an associate deputy attorney general, replied to Siskel and Bauer on behalf of Garland and dismissed their concerns as “misplaced.” CBS News reviewed a copy of that letter, which Politico also published.
“The context in which this information is used in the report makes it appropriate under Department policy and the Special Counsel regulations,” Weinsheimer wrote. “The identified language is neither gratuitous nor unduly prejudicial because it is not offered to criticize or demean the President; rather, it is offered to explain Special Counsel Hur’s conclusions about the President’s state of mind in possessing and retaining classified information.”
Weinsheimer said Hur was “applying the evidence he gathered to the applicable law.”
“Special Counsel Hur’s report provides significant detail on the bases for his declination decisions. This includes factors that support his determination of whether the President knew he possessed classified information and whether he acted willfully in possessing and retaining it,” he continued. “The language to which you object goes directly to these issues.”
Weinsheimer also dismissed the comparison between Hur’s conclusions and Comey’s 2016 comments, calling it “inapt.”
“[Comey’s] reference to Secretary Clinton being ‘extremely careless,’ the [Office of Inspector General] found, was a comment on her uncharged conduct — it was not a comment offered in explanation of the evidence and its application to the law,” Weinsheimer wrote. “For these reasons, the OIG concluded Director Comey acted outside of his authority and in violation of Department policy. In contrast, Special Counsel Hur is specifically charged by the Special Counsel regulations and his appointment order with making charging and declination decisions.”
Hur is scheduled to testify publicly about his report before the House Judiciary Committee on March 12.
Bauer told “Face the Nation” on Sunday that the president’s team had raised their issues with the report with Garland, but that it was clear the attorney general “had committed to make the report public the way that the special counsel had written it, and so that’s the report that we have.”
CBS News
One dead in small plane crash along highway in New York’s Westchester County
HARRISON. N.Y. — One person was killed when a small plane crashed along Interstate-684 in Westchester County, New York, on Thursday night.
New York State Police said two people were aboard the plane when it went down at around 7 p.m. local time in the town of Harrison. The plane landed in a patchy area that separates the north and south lanes of the highway.
The victim’s name was not released, and the condition of the second person aboard the plane was not immediately provided. There was no word of any injuries to anyone on the ground.
According to FlightAware, the pilot took off from Linden Airport in New Jersey and was headed to Westchester County Airport, which is located about 1.5 miles from where it crashed.
FlightAware lists the owner of the plane as Altisky Leasing One LLC, of Smyrna, Tennessee.
New York State Police said the highway was closed on the northbound side at Exit 2, and on the southbound side at Exit 3, adding that local detours were in place. Drivers were urged to avoid the area.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a statement the crash also caused an aviation gas spill, which the state Department of Environmental Conservation was working to contain and clean up.
She added, “My heart goes out to the loved ones of those on board during this tragic incident, and I am praying for a safe recovery for the injured individual.”
CBS News
Former Syrian military official who oversaw notorious prison indicted in California on federal torture charges
A former Syrian military official who oversaw a prison where alleged human rights abuses took place has been charged with several counts of torture after being arrested in July for visa fraud charges, authorities said Thursday.
Samir Ousman al-Sheikh, who oversaw Syria’s infamous Adra Prison from 2005 to 2008 under recently ousted President Bashar al-Assad, was charged by a federal grand jury in California with several counts of torture and conspiracy to commit torture.
“It’s a huge step toward justice,” said Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the U.S.-based Syrian Emergency Task Force. “Samir Ousman al-Sheikh’s trial will reiterate that the United States will not allow war criminals to come and live in the United States without accountability, even if their victims were not U.S. citizens.”
Federal officials detained the 72-year-old in July at Los Angeles International Airport on charges of immigration fraud, specifically that he denied on his U.S. visa and citizenship applications that he had ever persecuted anyone in Syria, according to a criminal complaint. He had purchased a one-way plane ticket to depart LAX on July 10, en route to Beirut, Lebanon.
Human rights groups and United Nations officials have accused the Syrian government of widespread abuses in its detention facilities, including torture and arbitrary detention of thousands of people, in many cases without informing their families.
The government fell to a sudden rebel offensive last Sunday, putting an end to the 50-year rule of the Assad family and sending the former president fleeing to Russia. Insurgents have freed tens of thousands of prisoners from facilities in multiple cities since then.
In his role as the head of Adra Prison, al-Sheikh allegedly ordered subordinates to inflict pain and was directly involved in inflicting severe physical and mental pain on prisoners.
He ordered prisoners to the “Punishment Wing,” where they were beaten while suspended from the ceiling with their arms extended and were subjected to a device that folded their bodies in half at the waist, sometimes resulting in fractured spines, according to federal officials.
“Our client vehemently denies these politically motivated and false accusations,” his lawyer, Nina Marino, said in an emailed statement.
Marino called the case a “misguided use” of government resources by the Justice Department for the “prosecution of a foreign national for alleged crimes that occurred in a foreign country against non-American citizens.”
U.S. authorities accused two Syrian officials of running a prison and torture center at the Mezzeh air force base in the capital of Damascus in an indictment unsealed Monday. Victims included Syrians, Americans and dual citizens, including 26-year-old American aid worker Layla Shweikani, according to prosecutors and the Syrian Emergency Task Force.
Federal prosecutors said they had issued arrest warrants for the two officials, who remain at large.
In May, a French court sentenced three high-ranking Syrian officials in absentia to life in prison for complicity in war crimes in a largely symbolic but landmark case against Assad’s regime and the first such case in Europe.
Al-Sheikh began his career working police command posts before transferring to Syria’s state security apparatus, which focused on countering political dissent, officials said. He later became head of Adra Prison and brigadier general in 2005. In 2011, he was appointed governor of Deir ez-Zour, a region northeast of the Syrian capital of Damascus, where there were violent crackdowns against protesters.
The indictment alleges that al-Sheikh immigrated to the U.S. in 2020 and applied for citizenship in 2023.
If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison for the conspiracy to commit torture charge and each of the three torture charges, plus a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison for each of the two immigration fraud charges.
CBS News
NYPD provides details on possible motive in UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting
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