President Joe Biden’s memory struggles were highlighted on Tuesday after the transcript of his interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur was released prior to the lawyer’s testimony before Congress.
Hur testified in front of the House Judiciary Committee on his decision not to recommend charges against Biden for his handling of classified materials. He defended this decision and his detailed criticism of the president’s memory during the interview.
“My assessment in the report about the relevance of the president’s memory was necessary and accurate and fair,” Hur said in his opening statement, per Fox News. “Most importantly, what I wrote is what I believe the evidence shows and what I expect jurors would perceive and believe. 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.”
Hur also disputed claims that Biden was exonerated in his report.
“So this lengthy, expensive, and independent investigation resulted in a complete exoneration of President Joe Biden,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) told Hur. “For every document you discussed in your report, you found insufficient evidence that the president violated any laws about possession or retention of classified materials. The primary law that you analyze for potential prosecution was part of the Espionage Act, 18 U.S.C. 793, which criminalizes willful retention or disclosure of national defense information. Is that correct?”
“Congresswoman, that is one statute that we analyzed. I need to go back and make sure that I take note of the word that you used. Exoneration. That is not a word used in the report and that is not part of my task as a prosecutor. The judgment that I received and that I ultimately reached was relating to whether sufficient evidence existed such that the likely outcome would be a conviction,” Hur responded.
“You exonerated him,” Jayapal claimed.
“I did not exonerate him,” Hur countered. “That word does not appear in the report, Congresswoman.”
The released transcript from the October 2023 interview confirmed Biden forgot when his son Beau died, which he denied in a press conference after the report was released last month.
“I don’t know. This is, what, 2017, 2018, that area?” Biden said, according to the transcript, when asked, “Where did you keep papers?”
“Remember, in this timeframe, my son is — either been deployed or is dying, and, 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,” Biden said, referring to former President Barack Obama.
“I’m not — and not a mean thing to say. He just thought that [Hillary Clinton] had a better shot of winning the presidency than I did,” he continued.
“What month did Beau die? Oh, God, May 30,” he said.
The president’s team then stated his son died in 2015.
“Was it 2015 he had died?” Biden responded.
“It was May of 2015,” his team stated.
“It was 2015,” Biden responded.
Hur concluded in his report last month that Biden would likely present himself on trial as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” In response to the report, the president held a press conference in which he criticized Hur’s reference to their discussion of his dead son.
“There’s even some reference that I don’t remember when my son died,” the president said. “How the hell dare he raise that? Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself it wasn’t any of their damned business.”
Biden made several gaffes at the press conference, including referring to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi as “the president of Mexico,” as previously reported by The Dallas Express. Republicans played the press conference at the start of Hur’s testimony on Tuesday.
The transcript of Biden’s interview with Hur additionally showed that the president forgot the word “fax machine” twice. He also could not call to mind the name of the agency in charge of classified materials and where staff members returned his documents.
“Was she the one that was getting material to the University of Delaware,” Biden said, according to the transcript. “[O]ne of them focused on taking the things that she thought that Delaware might want, or that would go to the what’s it called? You know, the federal government.”
“The [National] Archives,” said his attorney.
