Newly-released recordings of Joe Biden speaking to special counsel Robert Hur in 2023 show the declining president’s memory lapses as he struggles to remember when his son Beau died.
While in office, Biden asserted executive privilege over the audio tapes of his interview with ex-special counsel Hur, who went on record describing Biden as ‘elderly’ and ‘forgetful’ and with ‘diminished faculties’.
A then-80-year old Biden fails to recall when his son Beau passed away and even when he left office as vice president under Barack Obama in an interview recorded seven months before the debate disaster against Donald Trump that effectively ended his re-election run.
Hur asserted during the investigation over the mishandling of classified evidence that jurors would see the president as ‘a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.’
Hur was appointed special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland in January 2022 to investigate the president’s handling of classified files based on a range of areas including Afghanistan.
Transcripts of Hur’s interviews with Biden on October 8 and October 9, 2023 had already revealed that Biden’s lawyer had to tell him what year his son Beau died of brain cancer and the president joked about the special counsel finding pictures of his wife in a swimsuit.
‘What month did Beau die?’ Biden mused at one point, adding, ‘Oh God, May 30th.’
A White House lawyer then chimed in with the year, 2015.
Newly-released recordings of Joe Biden speaking to special counsel Robert Hur in 2023 show the declining president’s memory lapses as he struggles to remember when his son Beau died
‘Was it 2015 he died?’ Biden asked.
After the DOJ had searched his garage and office for classified documents, Biden joked to Hur: ‘You left everything in place. I just hope you didn’t find any risque pictures of my wife in a bathing suit. Which you probably did. She’ s beautiful.’
Hur argued: ‘I understood that my explanation about this case had to include rigorous, detailed, and thorough analysis.
‘In other words, I needed to show my work,’ he will say. ‘I knew that for my decision to be credible, I could not simply announce that I recommended no criminal charges and leave it at that. I needed to explain why.’
Hur added that he had to call Biden’s memory into question and could not make a charging decision without assessing the ‘President’s state of mind’.
‘For that reason, I had to consider the President’s memory and overall mental state, and how a jury likely would perceive his memory and mental state in a criminal trial,’ he’ll say.
‘Because these issues were important to my ultimate decision, I had to include a discussion of them in my report.
‘I did not sanitize my explanation. Nor did I disparage the President unfairly.
‘I explained to the Attorney General my decision and the reasons for it. That’s what I was required to do’.
This is a developing story.
