Former President Joe Biden’s sprawling interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur laid bare his fading memory and apparent difficulty staying on topic, as audio from the October 2023 discussion revealed he frequently veered off course into lengthy anecdotes while being questioned about his handling of classified documents.
The generally upbeat and affable then-80-year-old president often cracked jokes, waxed nostalgic and used saucy language — but also rambled, trailed off and often forgot the dates of key events in his life — including when his son, Beau, died of brain cancer — the audio showed.
The audio, which was first obtained by Axios this week after nearly 18 months of Biden’s camp refusing to release it, sheds light on Hur’s assertion from last year that if Biden was brought to trial over the classified documents row they would perceive him as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” though no charges were ever filed.
The now-82-year-old’s flimsy grasp of facts and dates was especially apparent when responding to Hur’s question about where he kept documents related to projects he was working on after his vice presidency ended in 2017, when the Bidens moved into a rented estate on Chain Island Road in McLean, Va.
“Well, um… I, I, I, I, I don’t know. This is what, 2017? 2018? That area?”
“Yes, sir,” Hur confirmed.
“Remember, in this timeframe, my son is — either been deployed or is dying, and so it was — and by the way, there were still a lot of people at the time when I got out of the Senate that were encouraging me to run in this period, except the president. I’m not — and not a mean thing to say. He just thought [Hillary Clinton] had a better shot of winning the presidency than I did.”
Beau Biden, in fact, was deployed in Iraq from October 2008 to October 2009, and died May 30, 2015. The mention of Hillary Clinton as a presidential candidate pegs the timeframe he was referencing as sometime before April 12, 2015, when she formally announced her candidacy for the 2016 election.
“I hadn’t walked away from the idea that I may run for office again. But if I ran again, I’d be running for president,” Biden continued.
“And, and so what was happening though … what month did Beau die? Oh, God, May 30th …”
White House Counsel Rachel Cotton and an unidentified male speaker quickly chimed in and reminded the then-president that the year his son died was 2015.
“Was it 2015 he died?” Biden asked.
“It was May of 2015,” the unidentified male speaker said.
“It was 2015,” Biden repeated.
Biden then apparently struggled to remember when President Trump was elected for his first term.
“And that’s what happened in the meantime is that as — and Trump gets elected in November of 2017?” he asked, sounding uncertain.
“2016,” said an unidentified male speaker.
“‘16,” said another.
“‘16, 2016. All right. So … why do I have 2017 here?” a confused Biden asked.
“That’s when you left office, January 2017,” White House Counsel Edward Siskel reminded him.
“Yeah, OK. But that’s when Trump gets sworn in, then, January …”
“Right,” said Siskel.
“Right, correct,” said his personal attorney, Bob Bauer.
Biden then launched into a fractured anecdote about his son, Beau, taking lengthy pauses and trailing off after several different thoughts.
“OK, yeah. And in 2017, Beau had passed and — this is personal — the genesis of the book and the title ‘Promise Me, Dad’, was a, uh … I know you’re all close with your sons and daughters, but Beau was like my right arm and Hunt was my left,” he said.
“Those guys were a year and a day apart, and they could finish each other’s sentences, and Beau – I used to go home on the train, and — in the period — that I was still in the Senate … anyway,” he said before a full seven-second pause without speaking.
“There was pressure — not pressure — Beau knew how much I adored him, and I know this sounds … maybe this sounds so … everybody knew how close we were. There was not anybody in the world who wondered whether or not … anyway. And so …”
At this point, Hur interrupted Biden and suggested it might be a good time to take a break, which the president declined.
“No, I … let me just keep going to get it done,” he said before continuing his rambling anecdote about his ultimate decision to run for president.
A few minutes in the audio later, Biden had to be reminded when he announced he would seek the presidency.
“… well, when did I announce for president?” he asked
“2019,” Deputy Special Counsel Marc Krickbaum said, which Hur echoed.
Biden’s apparent cognitive and physical decline became key issues leading to his disastrous debate performance in June 2024, which ultimately led to him dropping out of the race less than a month later.
Throughout June and July of last year, Democrats and left-leaning media ridiculed any reporting that the then-president had lost a step as “fake news,” dismissing video showing him appearing confused or experiencing a freeze-up as “cheap fakes.“
Now, however, many of those same media figures who insisted Biden was “sharp as a tack” last summer, including many Democratic allies, have begun to question whether the former president’s inner circle hid his foggy mental state from the American public.
This week, Biden was diagnosed with an “aggressive” form of prostate cancer, which has already invaded the 82-year-old’s bones. The diagnosis has raised new questions about whether his physicians knew he had cancer even as he was seeking a second term as president.
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