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Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed former federal prosecutor Robert Kyoung Hur as special counsel in the investigation of President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents dated from his time as vice president.
The appointment comes after Biden’s personal attorneys discovered classified government records in his former office at the Penn Biden Center as well as his private residence in Delaware. Garland’s order charges Hur with examining the possible unauthorized removal and retention of these documents. Hur is also authorized “to prosecute federal crimes arising from the investigation of these matters.”
As special counsel, he will face heightened scrutiny from both sides of the aisle, especially Republicans who have seized on the documents to accuse Biden of hypocrisy and the Department of Justice of perpetrating a double standard.
“I will conduct the assigned investigation with fair, impartial and dispassionate judgment,” Hur said in a statement following his appointment. “I intend to follow the facts swiftly and thoroughly, without fear or favor and will honor the trust placed in me to perform this service.”
“This appointment underscores for the public the department’s commitment to both independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters, and to making decisions indisputably guided only by the facts and the law,” Garland said in a press release.
A seasoned lawyer and longtime federal prosecutor, Hur was born to South Korean parents in New York City. After receiving his bachelor’s degree from Harvard in 1995 and his law degree from Stanford in 2001, he clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Judge Alex Kozinski of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Eventually, Hur became special assistant and later counsel to Christopher Wray, then the assistant attorney general in charge of the DOJ Criminal Division, which handles counterterrorism, corporate fraud, and appellate matters.
From 2007 to 2014, Hur served as assistant U.S. attorney in the district of Maryland, where he prosecuted gang violence, firearms and narcotics offenses, and white-collor crimes related to fraud, corruption, and intellectual property theft. In 2017, Hur was appointed principal associate deputy attorney general within the DOJ. During his tenure he was a senior aide to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, assisting him with oversight of the department.
The following year, President Donald Trump nominated Hur as the 48th U.S. attorney for the district of Maryland. Confirmed unanimously by the Senate, Hur served as the chief law enforcement officer of Maryland from 2017 to 2021, supervising 90 assistant U.S. attorneys and 72 support personnel. His office handled high-profile matters involving national security, cybercrime, public corruption, and financial fraud.
Hur led the fraud case against former Democratic Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh, who was sentenced in 2020 to three years in prison for arranging fraudulent sales of her books to enrich herself and fund her mayoral run. From 2021 onward, Hur worked as a private partner at the Washington D.C. office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.
Hur currently serves as chair of the Asian American Hate Crimes Workgroup, a statewide body in Maryland formed by Republican Gov. Larry Hogan to develop strategies for addressing the rise in anti-Asian violence and discrimination. In November 2021, Hogan announced a series of statewide actions based on the workgroup’s findings to better support Asian American students, businesses, and families.
Hur is also an active member of the Alliance for Asian American Justice, a nonprofit that provides pro-bono legal services to victims of anti-Asian hate. He recently represented two Korean American women who were attacked in their liquor store in Baltimore, Maryland in May 2021. Hur previously served on the Board of Directors of the Asian Pacific American Bar Association of the District of Columbia.
House Republicans are preparing to launch their own investigation into Biden as a separate special counsel probes Trump’s retention of hundreds of government records, including dozens of classified documents, at his Mar-a-Lago home.
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