Attorney General Merrick Garland told the heads of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees that special counsel Robert Hurr has concluded his investigation into classified documents found in a home linked to President Joe Biden.
Garland said Harr submitted his report to the Justice Department on Monday and was committed to “making the special counsel's report as public as possible.”
The attorney general told congressional leaders that the White House review of its contents for executive authority is not yet complete.
According to Garland, Hurr offered the White House counsel's office and Biden's personal counsel an opportunity to provide feedback on the report.
However, ABC News has learned that cooperating witnesses in the case are privately pleading with Hoor to allow them to revise a draft of the report before public release, according to lawyers representing 20 of those witnesses.
According to attorney Michael Bromwich, he has suggested to Hurr's team several times over the past month that — without such a review — Hurr would lose “the proper factual context” for the information provided by each of his clients.
But, as Bromwich recounted, Harr's office repeatedly told him that none of the witnesses in the trial could see the report before it became public.
“This is a huge procedural error and not in the public interest,” Bromwich told ABC News.
A lawyer representing the other witnesses agreed, saying Hur could review a draft of the report before his clients released it.
The ongoing dispute underscores growing concern among Biden's closest aides and the lawyers who represent them.
ABC News previously reported that Harin's team uncovered incidents of indiscretions linked to Biden.
Speaking to ABC News on Wednesday, Bromwich said he expects Harin's report to include anecdotes and information provided by many of his clients — from junior staffers to senior advisers — but he declined to provide any specifics.
Bromwich noted, however, that Harr's investigation may have led to investigators interviewing wait staff who worked at an event at Biden's home in recent years, revealing classified documents.
“This is a long-awaited report, and it will be widely read,” said Bromwich, a former Justice Department inspector general. “More important than your average inspector general's report is that the facts are accurately reported. … The witnesses who voluntarily cooperated and gave their time to the investigation are no less worthy.”
For the past three decades, according to Bromwich, witnesses whose information or testimony is included in inspector general reports have been able to review drafts of the reports before they are released. But Harr, a special counsel, is not afforded the same deference, and neither are other special counsels, Bromwich said.
Garland appointed Harr as special counsel in January 2023 after presidential aides discovered a set of ten documents at the Ben-Biden Center in Washington, D.C.
A second discovery of additional records in Biden's Wilmington, Delaware, garage precipitated Garland's decision to appoint Har as special counsel, ABC News reported at the time.
Investigators interviewed 100 current and former officials, including Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, former White House chief of staff Ron Klein and the president's son, Hunter Biden. In October, Harin's team spent two days interviewing Biden.
The White House has insisted from the outset that it is cooperating with investigators. Biden has repeatedly denied personal wrongdoing and said he was “surprised” to learn of the documents' existence.
The Hur trial played out quietly against the backdrop of special counsel Jack Smith's investigation into former President Donald Trump's handling of classified records, which culminated in a 40-count indictment last year in which Trump pleaded not guilty.
Trump sought to connect his circumstances to Biden's by trying to draw a balance between their behavior and calling his prosecution the result of a justice system that improperly targeted Republicans.
But records released by the National Archives indicate that Biden's legal team cooperated with National Archives officials, while federal prosecutors have accused Trump of deliberately withholding classified records from investigators at the National Archives and later the FBI.
Sources told ABC News that officials have uncovered incidents of indiscretion since Biden's vice presidency, but that — based on what witnesses told investigators — appeared to them to be the improper disposal of classified documents when Biden left the White House. 2017 is a misdemeanor rather than a criminal act.
