President Joe Biden lied about an exchange with special counsel Robert Hur regarding his son Beau during an angry press conference following the release of Hur’s report last month, a transcript of their five-hour interview confirms.
Hur’s report detailing the president’s handling of classified documents made several notes about Biden’s memory, including that he forgot the date of his son’s death and when his vice presidency began and ended. Biden held an unexpected press conference a few hours after the release of the report, criticizing Hur for questioning his late son’s death. The president, however, was the one who raised the date of his son’s death, according to the transcript the Daily Caller obtained .
Rather than pushing Biden about the date of Beau Biden’s death, Hur questioned the president on where work-related papers were being kept following the conclusion of his vice presidency in January of 2017.
“Well, um … I, I, I, I, I don’t know. This is, what, 2017, 2018, that area?” Biden began.
“Yes, sir,” Hur responded.
“Remember, in this time frame, 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. I’m not — and not a mean thing to say. He just thought that she had a better shot of winning the presidency than I did,” Biden began. “And so I hadn’t, I hadn’t, at this point — even though I’m at Penn, 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. And, and so what was happening, though — what month did Beau die? Oh, God, May 30 —”
“2015,” Rachel Cotton, a White House lawyer, interjected.
“2015,” an unidentified male confirmed.
“Was it 2015 he had died?” Biden asked.
“It was May of 2015,” an unidentified male reiterated.
“It was 2015,” Biden responded.
“Or — I’m not sure of the month, sir, but I think that was the year,” Robert Bauer, the president’s personal lawyer, weighed in.
During his post-release press conference, Biden blasted Hur for asking him about his son’s death, despite the report revealing that did not happen. “How in the hell dare he raise that?” Biden told reporters. “Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself, it wasn’t any of their damn business.”
During the Hur interview, the president went on to ask when former President Donald Trump was elected, and several speakers correct the president when he asks if it was November of 2017. The unidentified speakers tell the president that he left the vice presidency in January of 2017, which is why the year is coming up.
“OK, yeah,” Biden confirms. “And in 2017, Beau had passed and — this is personal …” the president continues, appearing to forget the year of his late son’s death again.
In his report, Hur noted that Biden willfully kept classified documents, but declined to pursue charges. The special counsel justified his decision by citing the memory lapses and adding that the jury might see Biden as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
The White House rebuked Hur, calling the report “flatly wrong,” “inappropriate” and “politically motivated.” The special counsel is now set to testify in front of Congress on Tuesday about his investigation.
The transcript provides new insight into a number of key moments from Biden’s interview with Hur beyond the Beau and vice presidential exchanges.
Biden repeatedly throws his own staff under the bus, as he did during the post-report press conference, failing to take personal ownership for the mishandling of classified documents.
“I don’t want to hold them responsible or get them in trouble, but I believe they were the ones who were packing up … and were deciding, you know, where, where things were going, to the best of my knowledge,” Biden said of his staff. He added he had “no goddamn idea” what was in one set of files shipped to his house.
The president claimed to not recall or struggled to recount certain details he was asked about on a number of occasions. Biden said he had no memory of a comment he made about a 2009 memo to then-President Barack Obama about surging troops to Afghanistan. Biden had told the ghostwriter for his memoir that he found the memo amongst classified documents downstairs.
“It has nothing to do with the investigation, you’ll understand why this is sensitive,” Biden said. “The president thought that I knew a lot more about Afghanistan than he did, and other members of the administration.”
Biden added that the memo was handwritten because it would have taken him five times as long to type it. In a separate exchange, Biden remarked that Obama didn’t want him to run for president in 2016 because he believed that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had a better chance of winning the election.
Despite claiming that his staff was ultimately responsible for moving around classified documents and moving items in and out of his residence, Biden displayed a highly-detailed knowledge of the architecture of his home and said he participated in moving his belongings in and out as well.
“I’m a frustrated architect,” Biden said, while explaining that his home had seven different types of molding. “In order to try to convince me not to run for Senate for the 19th time, my wife said, ‘Look, you don’t run, I’ll pay for architectural school for you.”
At one point, Hur remarked that Biden had “a photographic understanding and, and recall of the house.”
Biden also stated “I remember moving boxes, literally physically moving them, with help, one side to the other so I could get the Corvette in that garage on the left.”
At various times during the interview, Hur had to implore Biden to answer his questions rather than go off on unrelated tangents. Biden once blew past Hur’s attempt to re-focus the interview to explain to him how the torque on electric cars worked, complete with “car noises.”
“You step your foot on the accelerator all the way down until it gets about six, seven grand,” Biden said. “Then all the sudden it will say ‘launch.’ All you do is take your foot off the brake.”
Biden then made a car engine sound, according to the transcript.
The president also digressed about solar panels in Angola, investigators finding swimsuit photos of his wife amongst his documents and the archery skills he displayed on a trip to Mongolia, according to the transcript.
Nevertheless, the White House reacted defiantly to the release of the transcript Tuesday morning. It was delivered to Congress by the Department of Justice just hours before Hur was slated to testify about his findings.
“You can’t make this up. On page 72 of the transcript, it is not President Biden who admits to “misremembering” things from just moments earlier. It’s the Special Counsel himself,” White House spokesperson Ian Sams tweeted, after retweeting a number of other posts defending the president from Hur’s claims about his memory.
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