Biden Spox Accuses Special Counsel Robert Hur On CNN Of ‘Misleading’ In Testimony

White House spokesperson for investigations Ian Sams accused special counsel Robert Hur of “misleading” in his opening statement to Congress, and pushed back in an interview with CNN.

Hur released an opening statement ahead of his testimony at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on the investigation into President Joe Biden’s handling of sensitive documents. He defended his decision not to charge the president, but also defended the derogatory asides that Biden and his allies have hotly disputed.

On Tuesday’s edition of CNN News Central, Berman read portions of Hur’s opening statement for Sams, and asked him if he had “an issue” with it. Sams definitely did:

JOHN BERMAN: I read all of that because it included the issue where Robert Hur said we had evidence the president willfully retained documents, but it did not rise beyond a reasonable doubt. Do you have an issue with that characterization?

IAN SAMS: Yeah. I mean, I think it lays bare pretty clearly that the result of this 15 month investigation that was led by a Trump appointee prosecutor who was named special counsel, found that there was no case here.

I think that some of those that language that you just laid out is a little bit misleading. In fact, later in the report, 200 pages in, not on page two, but 200 pages in, he says very clearly that the evidence does not fully support the idea that he willfully retained classified documents.

When it comes to sharing information with others, he says hundreds of pages into the report that the evidence does not support that. That the president knew that he was even telling him classified information.

And so I think that what’s lost in the shuffle of all this is that it’s it’s the evidence in the facts that were accumulated over a 15 month investigation, comprehensive, very long, very intrusive, actually refuted these theories that the special counsel explored and found very plainly that there was not a case to be made here.

JOHN BERMAN: What the special counsel explicitly says is the evidence did not rise to the level of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. He says, because the evidence fell short of that standard. I declined to recommend criminal charges against Mr. Biden. You were quoting from the actual 400 page report, which I tried to read as much of it as I could. I would just and I would just go and just be clear. I was just quoting from the opening statement that he’s going to deliver to Congress today. It says largely the same thing–

IAN SAMS: I just have it. I just have it written down right here, actually on page 215, the report says, quote, there is in fact a shortage of evidence on these points.

So I think that he’s going to have to reconcile those two things, and that’s up to him to do. But the report is very clear that the evidence and the facts that were gathered over 15 months show that there is no case here. And what people are going to see in the transcript that now, I heard Evan talking about having access to and I believe the Justice Department has produced to Congress this morning.

The transcript is going to show that the president had very clear and detailed testimony to the special counsel that he did not know he had these, that he was unaware. We’ve said that from the very beginning of this case, that as soon as these documents were discovered, we fully cooperated with the Justice Department to ensure that they were returned.

And why did we do that? We did that because the president takes classified information seriously. He testified to the special counsel, for example, that if he had ever found anything, he would have given it back. And that’s proven out, by the way, this case is played out in exactly how he handled this from the very beginning, by cooperating and making sure that anything was given back.

Watch above via CNN News Central.