What Is the Hur Report & How Could It Affect Joe Biden In the 2024 Presidential Elections?

People are up in arms over Joe Biden and the Hur Report. We’ve got the skinny on what could be the tipping point for the 2024 election.

“But her emails!”

There were a lot of things going on when Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton to win the 2016 U.S. presidential election. However, it was Clinton’s use of a private email server while working in the State Department that became the last straw for many voters.

Joe Biden is staring down a similar fate when it comes to classified documents.

Ever since last week’s release of the “Hur Report” regarding Biden’s handling of said documents, Biden’s odds of winning the 2024 election have slipped – all the way down to +235 at BetOnline (find out more with our BetOnline Review) as we go to press.

Is there any betting value here? Let’s take a closer look at what’s going on with this report and see if we can make sense of it all before going to the political betting sites.

What Documents Did Biden Have?

Back in early November, Biden’s personal attorneys found some classified documents in a closet at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement.

Then some more documents were found in late December, in Biden’s garage at his home in Wilmington, Delaware.

In total, some 25-30 classified documents were discovered. They’re classified, so we don’t know the exact contents, but they included intelligence briefings on Ukraine, Iran and the United Kingdom from the time Biden was vice president under Barack Obama.

Classified documents were found in the Biden Center, which also just happens to have received $30,000,000 from “Anonymous Chinese Donors”

This looks like several federal administrations have been doing the bidding of the CCP to cripple the American economy and way of life. pic.twitter.com/pxrXNtPCLz

— Mises Caucus (@LPMisesCaucus) January 17, 2023

The White House immediately reported the discovery of these documents to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), then handed them over the following day.

These things happen all the time, and Biden’s situation appeared far less troubling than Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents, which led to his indictment on June 8 of last year – but you know how things work these days.

What Is the Hur Report?

U.S. Attorney General, Merrick Garland, launched an investigation into the Biden matter on November 14, putting attorney John R. Lausch Jr. in charge; on January 12, Garland named lawyer Robert K. Hur as his special counsel.

Hur was the attorney for the District of Maryland from 2018 to 2021.

In his report, which was released on February 8 by the Justice Department, Hur found that “no criminal charges are warranted in this matter.” However, Hur also said that Biden had “diminished faculties” at age 81. “Biden would likely present himself to a jury … as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

That’s when the train went off the tracks.

Biden’s age is one of the biggest reasons his approval rating sits at 38.9%, according to the latest polls cited by FiveThirtyEight. Despite being exonerated by Hur, having his faculties called into question has damaged Biden’s campaign – and the Republican Party is putting the knife in, just like they did with Clinton and her emails.

Can Biden Recover?

Maybe.

However, his initial response to the report hasn’t won him any points. Strategist and former Bill Clinton advisor, Paul Begala, told CNN last Friday that the Hur Report was “terrible” for Democrats, and said Biden made it worse by going on the defensive during the previous day’s press conference.

CNN analyst, Elie Honig, also claimed that Biden “contradicted” the report by saying he “did not act willfully” when retaining those classified documents.

The right-wing media latched onto Honig’s comments and made them a talking point. However, it was The New York Times and other mainstream publications that really amplified the situation by calling the Hur Report a “political bomb” that could sink Biden’s campaign.

Watch President Biden’s remarks from the White House on Thursday. He spoke just hours after a special counsel’s report cleared him of criminal charges over his handling of classified documents but said he had a poor memory. “My memory is fine,” Biden said. https://t.co/ThkmCKPnza pic.twitter.com/N2ZL1Vj6qZ

— The New York Times (@nytimes) February 9, 2024

Sound familiar? If you’re in the reality-based community, you’re well aware that Biden is being put to task here; he’s being made a whipping boy, while Trump leads the polls despite all his indiscretions – and despite being an elderly man himself, making similar verbal gaffes when it comes to occasionally mixing up who’s the leader of which country.

Ageism is only part of the issue here.

As we discussed in this space last week when looking at the Electoral College odds at BetOnline, the robust U.S. economy isn’t helping Biden when it comes to his approval ratings.

People are upset for myriad reasons, the situation in Israel being one of the most divisive. And that ill will is being inflamed by social media, just as it was with Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Biden isn’t Clinton, though. Voters have already chosen him once over Trump, and if faced with the same choice this November, they’re more likely to pull the same lever than the current political odds would have you believe.

That might not make Biden’s “true” odds of victory better than even money, but +235 could be a bargain price.