Biden Special Counsel Robert Hur Once Oversaw Robert Mueller

(Bloomberg) -- Newly appointed Special Counsel Robert Hur brings rare firsthand experience with a sensitive investigation carrying high legal and political stakes for a sitting president.

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Hur — appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to lead a probe into government records found at President Joe Biden’s home and office — spent a year overseeing the work of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Hur served as the principal deputy to Rod Rosenstein from 2017 to 2018, when the former deputy attorney general was thrust into the spotlight following the recusal of his boss, Jeff Sessions, from the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Rosenstein appointed Mueller, a former FBI director, to lead the probe.

“He knows what he’s getting into because he’s seen it before,” Rosenstein said in a phone interview Thursday.

A special counsel isn’t subject to day-to-day oversight by political appointees at the Justice Department, but there can be communication about what they’re doing. Rosenstein said that Hur would meet with Mueller’s team roughly every two weeks to get an update on their status.

Hur would have seen the intense public scrutiny of every move that Mueller made. He would have seen how elected officials and pundits filtered each decision through a political lens. And he would have seen how former President Donald Trump and his Republican allies repeatedly and aggressively attacked the legitimacy of the Russia probe — led, like Hur, by a former Republican appointee to public office.

‘Ignore Politics’

“Rob understands the need to ignore politics and focus on what matters,” Rosenstein said.

Hur is stepping in as special counsel at a relatively early stage of the investigation. Garland said Thursday that the Justice Department was first notified in November about documents with classified markings found at an office Biden had used in Washington. It’s unclear if Hur will keep prosecutors or Federal Bureau of Investigation agents from US Attorney John Lausch’s office in Chicago who were involved in an initial review — or how big a team he’ll assemble.

Special counsels have authority to make outside hires and detail lawyers from other offices across the Justice Department. Hur can be disciplined or fired by Garland for misconduct, conflicts of interest, “or for other good cause.” Garland can overrule an investigative or prosecutorial move that Hur wants to make, but has to notify Congress.

Hur has years of experience at all levels of the Justice Department. He was a federal prosecutor in Maryland when Rosenstein was the US attorney. Following his time in the deputy attorney general’s office, Hur was nominated by Trump — with Rosenstein’s support — to lead the Maryland US attorney’s office, a position he held until 2021. He’s been in private practice at a large law firm, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher since leaving government.

After graduating from Stanford Law School, Hur clerked for two prominent Republican-nominated jurists, the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Alex Kosinski, who served on the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals until he resigned amid allegations of sexual misconduct.

Although Hur’s clerkships and later service in the Trump administration suggested Republican political leanings, his former supervisor at the US attorney’s office in Maryland, Stuart Berman, said partisanship didn’t enter into his work.

“I never saw any indication that politics played any role in any decision he made,” Berman said.

Berman said that like other assistant US attorneys, Hur “did a little bit of everything,” handling cases about white collar crimes to drugs. He tried cases before juries and did appellate work, and was “a very smart, very patient, calm, and thoughtful attorney,” Berman said.

Following Garland’s announcement, Hur released a brief statement saying he would “conduct the assigned investigation with fair, impartial, and dispassionate judgment. 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.”

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