The Daily Fuckup

Attorney General Merrick Garland told Congress on February 7 that Special Counsel Robert Hur had completed his investigation into President Joe Biden’s handling of classified records and submitted his final report on February 5. The Justice Department said the report was still under White House privilege review and had not yet been released publicly.

Garland’s letter to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees said the special counsel had finished the work and that DOJ expected to provide the report after the White House completed its review of privilege issues. The letter also said the Department would send Congress a notification once the report could be disclosed.

The notice immediately put Hur’s work back into the center of the fight over how the Justice Department handles politically sensitive investigations. Republicans had spent months criticizing the Biden documents inquiry, while Democrats and administration officials had argued that the review should follow the usual rules for classified material and executive-branch records. But on February 7, the only concrete development was procedural: the investigation was done, the report had been submitted, and the release process was not finished yet.

Garland’s letter also said that during Hur’s investigation there had been no instances in which DOJ rejected a special counsel request in an inappropriate manner. That is a narrow statement about the handling of the probe, not a broader ruling on anyone’s political motives.

The report itself would later become public, but not on February 7. For that date, the record was simpler than the surrounding politics: Hur had turned in his work, and the government was still sorting through the review process before anyone outside the Department could read it.