Former President Joe Biden rambled through an October 2023 interview with special counsel Robert Hur — repeatedly losing his train of thought and struggling to recall key details of his political and personal life, including when his son died, newly released audio of the sitdown shows.
“Well, um, I, I, I, I, I, I don’t know,” Biden, then 80, responded to one question about where he would store papers related to his post-vice presidential work at the Penn Biden Center, his memoir “Promise Me, Dad” and the Cancer Moonshot initiative.
Biden sat down with Hur and co-counsel Marc Krickbaum Oct. 8-9 as part of a probe ordered by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland into the 46th president’s unlawful retention of national security papers from his time as Barack Obama’s No. 2, as well as a senator from Delaware.
The Biden administration had refused to release the audio tapes of the interviews with Hur, which were obtained by Axios on Friday, arguing that they contained protected “law enforcement materials.”
Biden, speaking slowly with his voice fading in and out, repeatedly requested assistance figuring out the years of certain events.
“This is what, 2017, 18, in that area?” he asked in response to the special counsel’s question about the post-vice presidency activities.
“Yes, sir,” Hur responded.
Biden’s stunning decline during presidency
The former president, pausing throughout his answer, then appeared to believe that the events of 2017 and 2018 corresponded with when he left the Senate (2009) and his son Beau Biden’s death (2015).
“Remember, in this time frame, my son is … uh … would’ve 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,” Biden said.
After a digression about his presidential ambitions and former President Barack Obama’s reluctance to support him, Biden said: “What was happening though was … what month did Beau die? Oh god, May 30 …”
“2015,” one of his lawyers chimed in.
“Was it 2015 he had died?” Biden asked.
“It was,” the lawyer responded.
“I think it was 2015,” Biden, still unsure, said.
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