Robert K. Hur in 2019 when he was U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
Robert K. Hur, a former federal prosecutor and senior Justice Department official, this month delivered a report concluding that Joe Biden carelessly handled classified materials found at his home and former office after his vice presidency and shared government secrets with his ghostwriter, but that evidence was not strong enough to justify charging him with crimes.
Hur’s report also included troubling information about Biden’s memory lapses. He is expected to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on March 12, possibly his first public appearance since the report’s release. Here is a brief primer on Hur.
Who is Robert K. Hur, the special counsel?
Hur is a veteran attorney who graduated from Harvard and Stanford and began his legal career as a Supreme Court clerk for then-Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist. He went on to work as a federal prosecutor, led a U.S. attorney’s office, served as a top Justice Department official during the Trump administration and spent time working for some of the most prominent law firms in Washington.
He was a longtime federal prosecutor at the U.S. attorney’s office in Maryland, working both as an assistant U.S. attorney there and then, for nearly three years, leading that office.
Hur is a registered Republican, according to Maryland voter records. In 2022, he contributed $500 to the unsuccessful Senate GOP primary bid of former Vermont U.S. attorney Christina Nolan, and in 2008, he donated $201 to the presidential campaign of John McCain, the late Republican senator from Arizona, records show.
What is Hur’s experience at the Justice Department?
Hur’s previous stints with the Justice Department included jobs at the agency’s headquarters as well as years as a prosecutor in Maryland. He worked as the principal associate deputy attorney general, serving as the top aide to Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general in the Trump administration. Before that, he had also been special assistant to Christopher A. Wray, who was leading the Justice Department’s criminal division at the time and went on to become the FBI director.
Then in 2017, Trump tapped him to lead the Maryland U.S. attorney’s office, one of the busiest in the country and the place where Hur had spent seven years as an assistant U.S. attorney.
Hur took office in April 2018, working on issues that included drug cases, fraud and violent crime. On Hur’s watch, the Justice Department said, his office also focused significantly on national security and cybercrimes. According to the Justice Department, Hur personally tried the first federal jury trial held in-person in the Washington region during the pandemic, which had shuttered in-person jury trials nationwide.
During Hur’s time leading the U.S. attorney’s office in Maryland, it also prosecuted the case of a former National Security Agency contractor who stole a massive collection of classified government material — said at the time to be the largest theft of classified material in American history. The man’s attorney described the former contractor as a hoarder, and the information he kept was not shared with anyone. The former contractor pleaded guilty, saying he understood that what he did was wrong, and in 2019, he was sentenced to nine years in prison.
Hur left the U.S. attorney’s office in February 2021.
“For an attorney — especially a first-generation American like myself — representing the United States is a weighty privilege and a dream job,” Hur said in a statement at the time announcing his plans to step down. “I have been blessed to do so.”
[Biden’s classified documents, explained: What to know about the investigation]
What did Hur do after leaving the Justice Department?
Hur became a partner in the Washington office of the prominent law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. According to the firm, Hur brought “decades of experience in government and in private practice” to help clients, including individuals and companies, navigate white-collar criminal issues, regulatory matters and other topics.
What did Garland and Hur say about his appointment when Hur was named special counsel?
When he announced Hur’s appointment last year, Attorney General Merrick Garland praised the new special counsel’s “long and distinguished career as a prosecutor.” Garland cited some of Hur’s previous work, including as a federal prosecutor in Maryland. “I will ensure that Mr. Hur receives all the resources he needs to conduct his work,” Garland said.
After he was appointed, Hur said in a statement released by the Justice Department that he would carry out the investigation impartially.
“I intend to follow the facts swiftly and thoroughly, without fear or favor, and will honor the trust placed in me to perform this service,” Hur said.
What is a special counsel?
A special counsel is essentially a prosecutor who takes over a criminal investigation. Justice Department regulations say that the attorney general, or someone acting in that role, appoints a special counsel if a case meets a few criteria, including whether the situation involved “would present a conflict of interest for the department or other extraordinary circumstances.”
Garland said Thursday he had concluded that “it was in the public interest” to name a special counsel in this case.
What happens once a special counsel is appointed?
Special counsels do not exist in a vacuum. While special counsels are not subject to daily supervision from Justice Department officials, they do report to the attorney general, who can ask them to provide an explanation for actions they might take.
Once named to the role, a special counsel can only be removed for certain reasons, including misconduct or “other good cause,” according to the Justice Department regulations. And that removal can only be done by the attorney general.
When the special counsel’s work wraps up, the regulations say they must give the attorney general a report. At that point, it’s up to the attorney general to decide how much — or how little — of that report should be made public.
How many special counsels have been named lately?
Hur’s appointment was the fourth time since 2017 that the Justice Department has appointed a special counsel. In 2022, Garland appointed Jack Smith, another veteran Justice Department prosecutor, to become the special counsel overseeing criminal investigations involving Trump. Smith is still serving in that role.
In 2017, former FBI director Robert S. Mueller III was appointed special counsel to investigate possible coordination between Trump’s campaign and Russian officials. In 2019, Mueller submitted a written report, marking the end of his investigation.
The following year, Attorney General William P. Barr appointed John Durham, a U.S. Attorney, to serve as special counsel effectively investigating the origins of the investigation taken over by Mueller. Durham was appointed in October 2020, but the Justice Department only revealed it weeks later, after Biden defeated Trump in the presidential election that November.
In May, Durham completed his probe, issuing a report that was sharply critical of how the FBI handled the Trump-Russia investigation.
Perry Stein, Alice Crites and Ann E. Marimow contributed to this report.