Stunning and sad leaked audio from the already infamous Biden-Hur interview in 2023, in which Special Counsel Robert Hur attempted to ask the president about the boxes of classified information he was caught storing in his garage at home, amongst other places, reveals that the president couldn’t even remember basic dates for seminal events in the recent past.
In fact, according to the audio shared by Axios, a DC-focused news outlet, then-President Biden couldn’t even remember when his son Beau died or when then-former President Donald Trump was elected president. That inability to remember came despite the fact that both of which were incidents that had occurred just a few years beforehand and theoretically were quite meaningful events for then-President Biden.
In one moment of the tape, Biden tried to recall when Beau died, and had serious trouble doing so. Beginning, he said, “My son. Is either been deployed or is dying. And so… What was happening though?” He added, finally somewhat remembering the date, “What’s much about dying? May 30, 2015, he died. May 2015. I think it’s 2015. I’m not sure the months are, but I think that was it.”
Axios, using the “tick tock” of the grandfather clock in the room with Hur and Biden to emphasize the dead air in his answers, quoted the president as saying, when trying to talk about his book”: “Okay, yeah … ” Tick. “… Beau had passed and …” Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. “… this is personal …” Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. “… the genesis … ” Tick. “…of the book and the title Promise Me, Dad, was a …” Tick. Tock. Tick. “… I know you’re all close with your sons and daughters, but Beau was ..” Tick. Tock. “…like my right arm and Hunt was my left.”
That fumbling, near-inability to speak stands quite in contrast to the relatively put together version of things the official transcript recounts Biden said. According to it, Axios noted, he told Hur, “OK, yeah. In 2017, Beau had passed and — this is personal — the genesis of the book and the title Promise Me, Dad, was a — I know you’re all close with your sons and daughters, but Beau was like my right arm and Hunt was my left.”
Similarly, in another disastrous moment of the interview, Biden was unable to even remember when President Donald Trump was elected, saying, “Trump gets elected in November of 2017. 2016. 2016. So… That’s when we left office, January of 2017. But that’s when Trump gets sworn in manually.”
Listen to the disastrously awful audio here:
"*" indicates required fields
Hur infamously concluded that President Biden was simply too mentally incompetent to charge with unauthorized handling of classified documents, as someone with a brain so addled as his would be unlikely to have the requisite mens rea for the crime. Hur concluded, on that point, “It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him — by then a former president, well into his 80s — of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”
Biden spokesperson Kelly Scully, in any case, tried claiming that the audio of Biden mumbling and stumbling through trying to answer basic questions was unimportant, telling Axios: “The transcripts were released by the Biden administration more than a year ago. The audio does nothing but confirm what is already public.”