The View’s Alyssa Farah Griffin earned some fiery reactions from her co-hosts on Wednesday after accusing Democrats of “acting like MAGA Republicans” during a tense House hearing this week with Special Counsel Robert Hur.
Hur had multiple heated exchanges with Democrats over a report he authored that referred to President Joe Biden’s memory as “poor.” Hur led a probe into Biden’s handling of classified documents. His report recommended no criminal charges against Biden, but found the president “willfully” retaining classified documents.
On The View, Griffin, a former communications official in Donald Trump’s administration, referred to the hearing as “partisan hackery” and defended Hur against accusations of political bias.
Griffin said:
I thought it was partisan hackery on full sides on both sides. Robert Hur is a career [Department of Justice] professional and stood by his report and resisted efforts for making him overreach and diagnose things about Biden’s mental acuity time and time again. He also made very clear it is totally different than Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents which was far more egregious and finally he implored elected officials to actually care about protecting classified documents.
I think it is a mistake, Democrats are running on democracy and upholding our institutions, they were sounding like MAGA Republicans. I’m sorry. You can be a Republican working at DOJ and still follow the letter of the law. It’s not a witch-hunt. It’s not a partisan attack.
Joy Reid and Sunny Hostin immediately disagreed with the assessment. Hostin, a former prosecutor, claimed there is no chance Hur, who was appointed by Trump, was “non-partisan.”
“There is no way that a prosecutor puts — summarizes things in a report that are not contained in the transcripts. That is not how the procedure is done because I have —” Hostin said before Griffin cut back in.
“So only Democrats can try cases against Republicans and Republicans can try cases against Republicans?” she asked.
“No, what I’m saying is back in the day when I was a prosecutor, I didn’t know which of my colleagues were Republican, which were Independent, which were Democrats,” Hostin said.
“It’s public record who appointed them,” Griffin shot back.
“Yes, that is true. I was in the [Bill] Clinton administration and I was also in the [George W.] Bush administration, but — and that’s frequently the case — but this prosecutor was very partisan,” Hostin said.
The former prosecutor took issue with Hur’s assessment of Biden as elderly and likely sympathetic to a jury, arguing he went beyond a “legal standard” with his language.
“That was one of the reasons he felt he couldn’t win the case,” Griffin said.
Hostin later brought up Mike Pence’s own classified documents probe and suggested he was receiving preferential treatment as it was settled more quietly.
“The facts are different in each case!” Griffin argued.
Whoopi Goldberg later jumped in and accused Hur of acting like a “talk show host” with his report.
“Here’s the bottom line… his job was — he had one job that was, did [Biden] break the law. And that was what he needed to comment on,” she concluded.
Watch above via ABC.
