Biden Administration Clashed With Justice Dept. Over Special Counsel Report

Previously undisclosed letters show a testy exchange over whether the Justice Department violated its own guidelines in releasing a report with comments disparaging President Biden.

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White House and personal lawyers for President Biden wrote to Attorney General Merrick B. Garland the day before he released the report by the special counsel.

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, with a top department official rejecting complaints from Mr. Biden’s lawyers about disparaging comments in the report regarding the president, previously undisclosed correspondence shows.

White House and personal lawyers for Mr. Biden wrote to Attorney General Merrick B. Garland the day before he released the report by the special counsel, Robert K. Hur, objecting to passages in which Mr. Hur suggested that Mr. Biden’s memory was failing and questioned some of his actions even though he found no basis to prosecute him.

The lawyers said Mr. Hur’s comments “openly, obviously and blatantly violate department policy and practice,” the letters, obtained by The New York Times, show.

The next day, as the department was preparing to make the report public, Bradley Weinsheimer — an associate deputy attorney general and the department’s senior career official, or nonpolitical appointee — wrote back rejecting their criticism. He insisted that the comments in the report “fall well within the department’s standards for public release.”

The disclosure of the sharp exchange adds new detail to how the White House sought to head off what officials knew would be a political furor set off by the release of Mr. Hur’s report — and how the Justice Department declined to change course.

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