Mr. Hur spent time during the Trump administration as a top aide in the Justice Department when it installed a special counsel to oversee the Russia investigation.
Robert K. Hur, appointed on Thursday to oversee the investigation into President Biden’s handling of classified documents, has two attributes that suit the task — years of prosecutorial experience and a vivid understanding of the perils inherent in high-wire special counsel investigations.
Mr. Hur, 49, was President Donald J. Trump’s pick to run the U.S. attorney’s office in Maryland, where he earned bipartisan praise for his handling of violent crime and public corruption cases. But it is his 11-month stint as the top aide to the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein — as Mr. Rosenstein oversaw the appointment of a special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, to investigate Mr. Trump’s dealings with Russia — that might be most critical.
Mr. Hur helped run the day-to-day operations of the department at a time of major tumult in the department: From mid-2017 to late 2018, Mr. Rosenstein was under relentless political pressure, under threat of being fired by Mr. Trump over his decision to appoint Mr. Mueller, which the president considered a personal betrayal.
“We were coming under tremendous criticism from the commentators — and the president — and Rob kept his head down, pushed ahead and never lost his sense of humor,” Mr. Rosenstein said in an interview after Mr. Hur’s appointment was announced.
“This is a very different task than anything he’s done before,” Mr. Rosenstein said, adding that he thought Mr. Hur was the ideal pick. “Every special counsel starts with a sterling reputation, but no one finishes up that way.”
But Mr. Hur’s crucible moment came later, after he left Mr. Rosenstein’s staff to become the top prosecutor in Maryland.
Geoffrey S. Berman, the Trump-era U.S. attorney in Manhattan, wrote about Mr. Hur in his memoir, “Holding the Line,” which accuses the Justice Department under Mr. Trump of trying to use prosecutors in Manhattan to support Mr. Trump politically and pursue his critics. According to Mr. Berman, the Justice Department pushed his office to investigate John F. Kerry, the secretary of state in the Obama administration, who had angered Mr. Trump by trying to preserve the nuclear deal he had negotiated with Iran.
After Mr. Berman’s office decided not to bring criminal charges against Mr. Kerry, he wrote, Attorney General William P. Barr reassigned the matter to Mr. Hur, who called Mr. Berman to ask about it. “I went through the whole thing, explained our reasons for declining, and urged Hur to do the same,” Mr.
