Despite the best efforts by the previous administration to keep it hidden, an audio recording from former President Joe Biden’s interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur has been leaked.
The leaked audio shows Biden struggling with basic words and key memories.
Those memories include when his son Beau Biden died, when he left the vice presidency, and why he had classified documents he shouldn’t have had.
The audio was leaked after more than a year of congressional lawmakers demanding its release.
Many called for the sealed recording’s release amid questions about the former president’s memory lapses and mental acuity.
The transcript of Biden’s interview with Hur was released last year.
It confirmed the president’s frequent memory lapses.
The audio, obtained by Axios, contains clips from several interviews between Biden and Hur.
The interviews related to an investigation into Biden’s mishandling of classified documents while he was vice president.
When asked by Hur about where he kept papers he was actively working on around 2017 and 2018, Biden said that his son Beau was either “deployed or is dying” at that time.
Beau Biden died in 2015, however.
At one point, Biden said to himself, “When did Beau die?” and a lawyer answered that it was 2015.
He also said in the audio that President Donald Trump was elected in 2017, and was corrected that it was 2016.
“Why do I have 2017 here?” he said, referencing his notes.
Biden’s lawyer then tells him, “That’s when you left office.”
Later, when asked about a classified document on Afghanistan found at his lake house, Biden said at first he wasn’t sure how the document got there.
He then admitted, “I guess I wanted to hang on to it for posterity’s sake.”
The interview was also filled with long pauses, with Biden frequently going off on tangents and slurring his words.
Last July, the House Judiciary Committee sued then-Attorney General Merrick Garland for the audio recordings, stressing the importance of the “verbal and nonverbal context” of Biden’s answers that could be provided by the audio recordings.
The audio was especially critical considering that Hur opted against charging Biden after the interview.
Hur explained that he didn’t press charges, in part, because Biden was viewed as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
The committee argued at the time that the audio recordings – not merely the transcripts of them – are “the best available evidence of how President Biden presented himself during the interview.”
That lawsuit came before Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race.
He ended his re-election bid last July after he struggled in a June debate with Trump.
Biden had exerted executive privilege over the audio recordings.
Hur, who released his report to the public in February 2024 after months of investigation, did not recommend criminal charges against Biden for mishandling and retaining classified documents.
He stated that he would not bring charges against Biden even if he were not in the Oval Office.
Those records included classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan and other countries, among other records related to national security and foreign policy.
Hur said the documents, some of which were found lying around in Biden’s garage, implicated “sensitive intelligence sources and methods.”
Hur noted in his report that Biden struggled to remember details about when his son Beau died, which drew sharp backlash from the former president.
The report also showed Biden asking multiple times when his term as vice president ended while being questioned specifically about some of the classified documents at his home.
Another instance included Biden being asked about a notebook in his possession related to the war in Afghanistan.
“The date is 4-20-09,” Biden said.
“Was I still vice president? I was, wasn’t I? Yeah.”
LISTEN:
Back when Hur’s report was released, Biden reacted to him being classified as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
Biden responded in an angry statement, saying:
“I’m well-meaning, and I’m an elderly man, and I know what the hell I’m doing.
“I’ve been president. I put this country back on its feet.
“I don’t need his recommendation.”
