NBC Reporter Asks White House If Attacks on DOJ are Hypocritical While Urging Americans to ‘Trust the Institutions’
NBC News reporter Kelly O’Donnell pressed White House spokesman Ian Sams over the president’s recent attacks on the Department Of Justice following the release of Robert Hur’s report.
Hur released a report on Thursday which concluded President Joe Biden should not be criminally charged for storing classified material but noted he was an “elderly man with a poor memory.” Biden responded aggressively by pushing back against questions over his memory and allegedly cursed in a private meeting when the report was released.
Sams followed up with the president’s messaging on Friday by calling the report’s comments on Biden’s mental fitness “gratuitous” and “inappropriate.”
O’Donnell asked during a press briefing if Biden’s attacks on the DOJ are hypocritical given that the president has urged Americans not to give into Donald Trump’s rhetoric and “trust the institutions.”
O’DONNELL: In your advocacy here and in the President’s Council writing back to Mr. Hur. You’re saying that there were gratuitous comments that there were false pieces of information. How was the American public supposed to process this when we also live in a world where former President Trump asserts that there was a politicized process that resulted in his prosecution, related to classified documents and other things. So for the public, if Democrats on this administration say, trust the Department of Justice, trust the institutions, but you’re also arguing here who it is political cheap shots and false assertions. How are they to process that?
SAMS: Well, I talked about this actually a minute ago. And I think, you know, when you have the former attorney general, when you have the former acting FBI director, when you have the former general counsel of the FBI, you know, these are experienced people at the Justice Department who spent decades working at the Justice Department, and they’re saying it’s gratuitous. They’re saying that this is inappropriate, but this is inconsistent with DOJ policy and practice. That’s them saying it. We agree. You know, you heard the president speak forcefully about this last night. You heard the vice president speak forcefully about this today.
We certainly agree that it’s gratuitous. But I explain this a little bit in the opening. We’re in a very pressurized political environment. And when you are the first special counsel in history not to indict anybody, there is pressure to criticize and to make, you know, statements that maybe an otherwise you wouldn’t make. And, you know, I think that it leaves you wondering why some of these critiques are in there. But I think it’s also important to just fundamentally distinguish between the the prior case that you mentioned, I to be careful in terms of commenting on that, but the special counsel report goes into great detail about the differences in distinctions there. And I think it’s important to understand that the criticisms that you’re hearing of the gratuitous comments in the report, which are wrong, frankly. You know, this is being shared by people who have deep experience at the Justice Department.
Watch the clip above via CNN.
