The White House clashed with the Justice Department in the run-up to the release of a special counsel report last week about President Biden’s handling of classified information, previously undisclosed correspondence shows.
The letters, obtained by The New York Times, show that a top Justice Department official rejected complaints from Mr. Biden’s lawyers about disparaging comments in the report regarding the president.
The lawyers wrote to Attorney General Merrick B. Garland the day before he released the report by the special counsel, Robert K. Hur. They raised objections to passages in the report in which Mr. Hur suggested that Mr. Biden’s memory was failing and questioned some of his actions, even though the special counsel had found no basis to prosecute the president.
The lawyers said Mr. Hur’s comments “openly, obviously and blatantly violate department policy and practice,” the letters show.
The next day, as the department was preparing to make the report public, Bradley Weinsheimer — the department’s senior career official, or nonpolitical appointee, who deals with ethics complaints or appeals of department decisions — wrote back rejecting their criticism. He insisted that the comments in the report “fall well within the department’s standards for public release.”