WASHINGTON – Special Advisor Robert Hur’s explosive report on President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents concluded that he presented himself as an “elderly man with a poor memory” unable to remember key dates, including when he was vice president or the year of the death of his son.
Biden, for his part, blasted Hur for raising the subject of Beau Biden’s death, and his lawyers criticized the report.
But the transcription of Biden’s interview, which was reviewed by NBC News, paints a more nuanced picture on both sides.
Follow live coverage of Hur’s testimony here.
Despite the president’s claim that Hur brought up his son’s death first, the transcript shows that it was Biden himself who did so, as NBC News reported.
Biden, who often appeared to be thinking out loud in response to specific questions, at other times recalled in detail specific events that occurred during his time as vice president.
Biden spoke with Hur for 3 1/2 hours on October 8 and for 90 minutes the next day. The timing was difficult, as a major international crisis erupted on October 7 when Hamas attacked Israel.
Biden faced a series of questions from Hur and another federal prosecutor about the documents he saw as vice president, where and how he stored them and why some sensitive documents remained in his possession for more than five years after leaving office as vice president.
At one point, Hur acknowledged that some of his questions “would be related to events that happened years ago.” Biden joked in response: “I’m a young guy, so it’s not a problem.”
According to review of the transcript, Biden at times expanded beyond the narrow areas of particular issues. At one point, he described in great detail a visit to Mongolia in 2011, where he demonstrated unexpected archery skills during a cultural performance in his honor.
Biden has also often said he doesn’t remember a specific incident or, for example, why certain items were packaged in certain ways. And at times, he or his lawyers challenged prosecutors on the relevance or accuracy of the questions they asked, with Biden at one point challenging the logic of one of Hur’s lines of questioning.
The full transcript was provided to Congress on Tuesday, according to a source familiar with the matter. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., subpoenaed the case along with other documents related to the investigation .
Biden allies believe a full reading of the transcript will only strengthen their claim that Hur’s characterization of Biden during the interview was not based in reality. Rather, they argue, Hur’s sometimes meandering questions may have contributed to the confusion.
Hur’s assessment of Biden’s mental health will likely be front and center as Hur makes his first public appearance since the report was released last month, testifying Tuesday before Republican-led committees on Capitol Hill.
In his opening statement, Hur planned to defend his investigation, the final report and his treatment of Biden’s age.
“I knew that for my decision to be credible, I could not simply announce that I was not recommending any criminal charges and leave it at that. I had to explain why,” Hur planned to say, according to an advance copy of his remarks.
Speaking about the president’s age, Hur will say his characterization was “necessary, accurate and fair.”
“What I have written is what I believe the evidence shows and what I expect jurors will perceive and believe,” he will say. “I didn’t sanitize my explanation. Nor have I unfairly disparaged the president.
Year of death of Beau Biden
While the White House praised Hur’s decision not to pursue criminal charges, officials strongly protested the report he submitted to the Justice Department. Bob Bauer, the president’s personal lawyer, accused Hur of “investigative overreach” and said his report “tramples departmental regulations and standards.”
In a letter to Hur before the report’s release, Bauer and Richard Sauber, special adviser to the president, said Hur’s comments on Biden’s memory were not “accurate or appropriate” and that they used “highly prejudicial language to describe a common phenomenon among witnesses: a lack of recollection of events years old.”
Speaking to reporters the evening the report was released, Biden expressed anger at Hur’s suggestion that he did not remember, “even a few years later, the death of his son Beau.”
“How the hell dare he bring that up?” Biden said. “I don’t need anyone, I don’t need anyone to remind me of his passing.”
Hur’s yearlong investigation thrust him into the heart of perhaps the busiest period of Biden’s half-century in public life. Biden left office in 2017, nearly two years after burying his son. Beau Biden’s death from cancer and Biden’s decision not to run for president in 2016 set off a series of unpredictable events that would ultimately land him back in the White House in 2021.
It was in trying to share part of this timeline that Biden, in his interview with Hur, made a mistake that Hur ultimately captured in his report’s damning conclusion.
But even though Biden said Hur brought up the subject of his son’s death, it was, like NBC News reported, first raised by Biden himself. Around the middle of the first day of his interview, Hur asked Biden where he might have stored documents related to the work he was engaged in after leaving the vice presidency in 2017.
“Remember, during this time, my son has been deployed or is dying,” Biden said.
As he continued to reflect on this period, he seemed to confuse his intention to run in the 2016 election, in the months following Beau Biden’s death in 2015, with early considerations of a 2020 candidacy after his departure from office.
“Even though I’m at Penn,” he said, referring to the Penn Biden Center, which was established after he left office, “I haven’t given up on the idea of being able to run again in the elections.
Biden then asked what month his son died before quickly stating the date: May 30. The transcript indicates that others present intervened to specify the year: 2015.
“And Trump was elected in November 2017,” he said, before the transcript showed another participant corrected him to say 2016.
“Yeah OK. But that’s when Trump takes the oath of office,” he said, before describing the book “Promise Me, Dad,” which he would spend the next year writing, documenting the years before and after her son’s death.
“It’s personal,” he said.
There were other points during the two days of questioning where Biden appeared to misalign specific events with the correct years. Discussing moving items in 2019 from a house he rented in Virginia to Delaware, he said he needed furniture to set up a home studio to make media appearances during the COVID-19 pandemic. coronavirus, which started a year later.
Zoom out
These moments are likely to fuel Republicans eager to launch new political attacks on Biden’s ability to continue in office. Tuesday’s hearing takes place just days after Biden’s performance in the State of the Union speech, which was applauded by his Democratic colleagues.
A full reading of the more than 250 pages of transcripts reveals often mundane and prolonged exchanges between Biden and prosecutors about how he reviewed classified documents as vice president and how his cases were transported between the White House, his Delaware House and other locations.
The two days of questioning had few breaks, with Biden often rejecting suggestions to suspend the proceedings.
“I prefer to continue. I’ll spend the whole night there if we make it,” he said towards the end of the first day’s session.
Biden’s lawyers intervened at times when challenging prosecutors’ line of questioning, with Bauer at one point telling Hur that he should not “put him in a position where he has to speculate or create hypotheses, or try to engage in detective work.”
“I think we’re going down a path here that I find confusing,” Bauer said at another point. “They’re obviously trying to establish something,” Biden surmised.
Biden’s work on foreign policy throughout his career was evident from start to finish. The sessions began with Hur acknowledging, without specifics, the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7.
“I know there are many other things going on in the world that require your attention,” Hur began. “We might be interrupted by one,” Biden responded, adding that he had just spoken to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Biden at another point described the role he played as President Barack Obama’s No. 2.
“I would be the one to take the pressure, which I was willing to do because I knew as much as they did,” Biden said, referring to the Obama administration’s early deliberations on the future of the war in Afghanistan. .
He also pointed out that some of the problems he faced as vice president continue today. A significantly redacted portion of the transcript comes in the context of Biden’s booster meetings he held as vice president with lawmakers over the Iran nuclear deal. And discussing material uncovered by Justice Department officials regarding Pope Francis’ visit to the United States in 2015, Biden noted that he remains in contact with Francis.
“It’s my ticket,” Biden said, before clarifying that he was joking.
Lighter moments
Even amid tense discussions, Biden often found ways to lighten the mood. On several occasions, he teased investigators about their various searches of his properties.
“I just hope you didn’t find any racy photos of my wife in a swimsuit, which you probably did. She’s beautiful,” Biden said at one point.
After a lengthy discussion about the boxes found in Biden’s garage, Hur asked his colleagues if there were any further questions.
“Yeah. When am I going to clean up the rest?” Biden said.
Biden was particularly keen at one point to discuss his love of cars, relating to questions about boxes found near his Corvette. At one point, the transcript includes “Makes Car Sound” to capture Biden’s comments.
