Amid long, uncomfortable pauses,
Joe Biden struggled to recall when his son died, when he left office as vice president, what year Donald Trump was elected or why he had classified documents he shouldn't have had, according to audio Axios obtained of his
October 2023 interviews with
special counsel Robert Hur.
Why it matters: The newly released recordings of Biden having trouble recalling such details — while occasionally slurring words and muttering — shed light on why his White House refused to release the recordings last year, as
questions mounted about his mental acuity.
- The audio also appears to validate Hur's assertion that jurors in a trial likely would have viewed Biden as "a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory."
- Partly based on that determination, Hur decided not to prosecute Biden for improper possession of classified documents, angering Republicans because Trump was facing charges in his own classified document scandal then.
- Democrats and Biden's White House blasted Hur for his observations about Biden. They repeatedly insisted he was "sharp" and that Hur was politically motivated. But the audio from the six hours of interviews indicates he and co-counsel Marc Krickbaum were respectful and friendly.
The big picture: The audio surfaces as Democrats and the national media are grappling with the legacy of Biden's White House and campaign hiding his decline as he ran for another four-year term at age 81.
- Democratic leaders have struggled this week to respond to reports about a new book on that topic — "Original Sin," by Axios' Alex Thompson and CNN's Jake Tapper — that will be released Tuesday.
- The audio — from two three-hour sessions on Oct. 8 and 9, 2023 — adds voice and dimension to the transcripts of the interviews that the Justice Department made available in the weeks after Hur's report was released Feb. 8, 2024.
- Biden's White House refused to release the recordings last year, arguing they were protected "law enforcement materials" and that Republicans only wanted "to chop them up, distort them, and use them for partisan political purposes."
Between the lines: The audio shows what the transcript lacks — the president's dry-whisper voice and the long silences as he struggles to find the right words or dates. Those often were supplied by his attorneys, who acted as caretakers of his memory.
- The attorneys had to remind Biden the year his son Beau died (2015) and when Trump was first elected (2016).
- Also captured on the audio: the tick-tock of a grandfather clock in the White House's Map Room, where the interviews took place. It adds a metronomic measurement of Biden's halting speech — especially as he describes his book, Promise Me, Dad, about Beau's death from brain cancer at 46.
This is how that part of the interview is recounted in the transcript: Biden says, "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."
- But here's what it sounded like in the quiet room where the dead air between Biden's pauses is emphasized by the tick-tock of the clock:
"Okay, yeah … "
"... Beau had passed and …"
- Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick.
"... this is personal …"
- Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick.
"... 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."
Reality check: While Biden had clear memory lapses and needed assistance at times (with words such as "fax machine" and "poster board"), overall he was engaged in the interview.
- He cracked jokes and made humorous asides, and was able to respond to the general gist of the questions. But he had little memory of how he came to have classified documents after he left office as vice president.
- On Oct. 8 — the first day of the interview and the day after Hamas' attack on Israel — Biden often was slow and forgetful of basic facts.
- That day, it took Hur more than two hours to clearly determine how the documents could have ended up in various personal desks and file cabinets after Biden left office. That was because Biden kept veering into other subjects.
- On Oct. 9, however, Biden sounded much more engaged and vigorous.
Zoom in: Throughout his testimony, Biden sounded more like a nostalgic, grandfatherly storyteller than a potential defendant who could be accused of hoarding secret papers. He waxed on about:
- How then-President Obama in 2016 didn't want Biden to run for president out of the belief that Hillary Clinton "had a better shot of winning the presidency than I did."
- The walnut wood and seven different kinds of molding in refurbished rooms of his home.
- The Corvette he drove with comedian Jay Leno.
- The technological influence Gutenberg's printing press had on Europe.
- The visual impact of Richard Nixon sweating on TV during his 1960 debate with John Kennedy.
- And the time he shot a bow and arrow in Mongolia.
"Am I making any sense to you?" Biden asked at one point while discussing the classification process for sensitive documents.
Though amiable, the interview became somewhat tense when Biden attorney Bob Bauer chastised prosecutor Krickbaum for leading Biden to consider changing his story about why he kept a classified document about Afghanistan.
- "Your answer is that you don't know," Bauer instructed the president at one point.
- But then Krickbaum noted that journalists had written about the document, and he asked if Biden intended to keep it because of its historical value.
- "I guess I wanted to hang onto it just for posterity's sake," Biden acknowledged.
That admission of intent technically could have exposed Biden to criminal charges, and Bauer soon interjected: "I just really would like to avoid, for the purpose of a clean record, getting into speculative areas.… He does not recall specifically intending to keep this memo after he left the vice presidency."
- Krickbaum then called for a break.
In another instance, Krickbaum noted that DOJ had a copy of a recording made by Mark Zwonitzer, the ghostwriter of
Promise Me, Dad, whom Biden told in 2017, "I just found all the classified stuff downstairs."
- "So you can imagine we are curious what you meant when you said, 'I just found all the classified stuff downstairs.' " Krickbaum told Biden.
- "I don't remember," Biden responded. "And I'm not supposed to speculate, right?
- "Correct," said Bauer, Biden's attorney.
- "So — OK, well, I don't remember and it may have been — I just don't remember," Biden said.
- White House counsel Ed Siskel and his deputy, Rachel Cotton, also stepped in occasionally when the then-president was searching for words or dates.
Zoom out: Hur's report concluded that this evidence wasn't enough to persuade a jury to convict Biden — especially given how cooperative Biden had been (unlike Trump in his case) and how likable and forgetful Biden was.
- "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," Hur concluded.
- Trump's super PAC, MAGA Inc., promptly accused Biden of being unfit to be president if he weren't fit enough for trial.
Biden's defenders included then-Vice President Harris, who blasted Hur's report and called his comments about Biden's age "gratuitous, inaccurate and inappropriate."
- "The way that the president's demeanor in that report was characterized could not be more wrong on the facts and clearly politically motivated —gratuitous," Harris said then. ".... We should expect that there would be a higher level of integrity than what we saw."
What they're saying: Biden spokesperson Kelly Scully told Axios: "The transcripts were released by the Biden administration more than a year ago. The audio does nothing but confirm what is already public."
- Bauer, Siskel, and Hur did not respond to requests for comment.
