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Looking back on 2024 and excluding more obvious candidates such as President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu, I want to recognize former Special Counsel Robert Hur as my man of the year. Hur suffered the slings and arrows of President Biden and Biden’s team on the White House payroll as well as the depredations of the Democrats’ voluntary public relations arm in our garbage media. To say the least, events have nevertheless vindicated Hur to a fare-thee-well.

Named Special Counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate Biden’s handling of classified documents, Hur turned in his report this past February. He found that the evidence supported charges of misconduct against Biden. However, Hur found that Biden’s impaired cognitive condition undermined the mental element necessary to prove applicable crimes.

Hur then testified for some five hours before the House Judiciary Committee on his investigation. At the same time, transcripts of Hur’s interview of Biden in the investigation were released: October 8, 2023 (99 pages) and October 9, 2023 (157 pages).

Hur confined his testimony to the four corners of the lengthy report he submitted to Garland. Whenever he was asked about the facts of the case, he referred to the report’s findings. He demonstrated perfect poise and complete mastery of the case as set forth in his report.

The House Democrats sought to impute a finding of “complete exoneration” of Biden to Hur. Hur begged to disagree. Hur was admirably noncompliant in the face of the Democrats’ efforts to put words in his mouth. The Free Beacon’s video of highlights (below) showed that “complete exoneration” missed the mark. As Hur put it in his opening statement, he “identified evidence that the President willfully retained classified materials after the end of his vice presidency, when he was a private citizen.” This evidence contradicted everything Biden himself has said in public about the case, although lying to the public is not a crime. It is standard operating procedure.

Hur was criticized for resting his recommendation of non-prosecution on Biden’s senility. Hur explained that he was required to “show [his] work” supporting his recommendation of non-prosecution. At the time I wrote that Hur reminded me of how I showed my work in solving high school physics problems. I began with the answer and worked back from there. I erred in that criticism and apologize for it here.

Biden has been a serial violator of the national security law in the course of his overlong political career. His misconduct is egregious. And he is a senescent dolt with the possible reservation that in some instances he may be senile like a fox. I don’t recall when “I don’t recall” was ever so plausible. Hur is owed apologies by those who defamed him and recognition for a job well done in the Biden case.

In his current Claremont Review of Books essay “All the president’s mental lapses,” William Voegeli presents the Washington Post’s treatment of Hur as a case study in the self-liquidation of “legacy media outlets,” as he calls them. Voegeli’s essay seems to me an instant classic.

Quotable quote from Voegeli’s essay: “We can update Sontag’s thought experiment. Imagine someone whose only source of news about Joe Biden between 2020 and 2024 was The Daily Wire or The Washington Free Beacon, and someone else in the same period whose only source was CNN or The Washington Post. Which news consumer would have been better informed about the realities of Biden’s cognitive decline? Which one would have been less surprised that the Biden who showed up at the June 27 debate appeared, in the language of the Post’s November 8 editorial, ‘dazed, confused, tired and inaudible’? The answer should give many people pause.”