As Ed pointed out this morning, the transcripts of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s interviews with President Biden were released today, and they seem to confirm some of the specific claims made in Hur’s report about Biden’s memory lapses.
During Hur’s questioning by members of congress he was asked if he was aware the transcripts had been released today and he said he was. He was then asked if he had anything to do with the timing of the release and he said no, specifically that doing so was above his pay grade. In other words, there’s no necessary or natural reason the transcripts were released today except the obvious one: Politics. It looks like someone higher up at the DOJ decided to release the transcripts to Congress and from there it immediately found its way to major newspapers.
If the plan was to muddy the waters of Hur’s testimony it seems to have worked. Both the NY Times and the Washington Post have published stories about the transcript. The Times’ story is headlined “How the Special Counsel’s Portrayal of Biden’s Memory Compares With the Transcript.” Unfortunately for the White House, the transcript suggests Hur was on to something. Here’s a bit of the transcript of Biden trying to remember what year his son died and when the 2016 election took place.
BIDEN: And, and so what was happening, though — what month did Beau die? Oh, God, May 30 —
RACHEL COTTON, A WHITE HOUSE LAWYER: 2015.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: 2015.
BIDEN: Was it 2015 he had died?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: It was May of 2015.
BIDEN: It was 2015.
ROBERT BAUER, BIDEN’S PERSONAL LAWYER: Or — I’m not sure of the month, sir, but I think that was the year.
MARC KRICKBAUM, HUR’S DEPUTY: That’s right, Mr. President. It —
BIDEN: And what’s happened in the meantime is that as — and Trump gets elected in November of 2017?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: 2016.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: ’16.
BIDEN: ’16, 2016. All right. So — why do I have 2017 here?
ED SISKEL, BIDEN’S WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL: That’s when you left office, January of 2017.
It’s impossible to read this and not wonder if Biden routinely has conversations like this in which a host of people around him are trying to help him remember basic facts of his own life. I don’t see any way to spin this as not that serious. Sure maybe a death in the family is hard to pin down but why would someone who has spent his entire life in politics ask if Trump was elected in 2017?
Put it this way, if Trump were caught asking someone around him if Biden was elected in November 2021, I don’t think many in the media would brush that off as a simple mistake. It’s just something no one in Biden’s position should be struggling with. And the article goes on to point out there were other points at which Biden couldn’t seem to remember when he was Vice President.
BIDEN: Somebody must’ve, packing this up, just picked up all the stuff and put it in a box, because I didn’t.
HUR: OK. Do you have any idea where this material would’ve been before it got moved into the garage?
BIDEN: Well, if it was 2013 — when did I stop being vice president?
COTTON: 2017.
BIDEN: So I was vice president. So it must’ve come from vice-president stuff. That’s all I can think of.
President Biden also asked if he was Vice President in 2009 and again had to be reminded. And yet the Times story ends with a subsection titled “Mr. Biden appeared clearheaded most of the time.” Great, because what we aspire to in a president is someone who is clearheaded most of the time.
Actually, if you click over to the Washington Post version of the same story it might be more fair to say Biden was meandering all over the place during his testimony. It’s titled “Full transcript of Biden’s special counsel interview paints nuanced portrait.”
The full transcript provides a more complete window into the back and forth between the two men, in which Biden frequently joked with prosecutors in a setting that seemed more chummy than antagonistic. (“I just warn you all: Never make one great eulogy because you get asked to do everybody’s eulogy,” Biden said at one point.) But the president also frequently digressed, with stories about trips to Mongolia and about the time he helped represent a client who lost one testicle and part of his penis. He also later twice mimicked the sounds of a car.
Biden spoke of working “in my pajamas” while at the Naval Observatory, made light of his poor spelling (“If it’s spelled right, it’s probably not”), and laughed off a photo of him with a onetime ally. (“You can tell it’s old. I have my arm around Lindsey Graham.”) He joked about how much time the FBI spent inside his home during the documents probe — “The FBI know my house better than I do” — and about what agents may have discovered.
“I just hope you didn’t find any risqué pictures of my wife in a bathing suit,” the president told federal prosecutors. “Which you probably did. She’s beautiful.”
Is Biden’s ability to ramble about topics at random in doubt? Does his ability to go on a tangent having nothing whatsoever to do with the proceedings at hand demonstrate he has a great memory? The transcript shows Special Counsel Hur repeatedly trying to get Biden back on track as he starts talking about submarine deals in Australia, “solar facilities in Angola,” the future location of his presidential library and how to launch a Corvette.
At times during the interview, according to the transcript, the president made noises like a car.
“By the way, you know how it works?” Biden asked Hur. “It’s really cool.”
Hur remarked, “Sir, I’d love — I would love, love to hear much more about this, but I do have a few more questions to get through.”
“You step your foot on the accelerator all the way down until it gets about six, seven grand,” Biden continued. “Then all the sudden it will say ‘launch.’ All you do is take your foot off the brake.”
The transcript then indicates “(Makes car sound)” as well as “(Laughter).”
Hur responded that it was something on his “bucket list” and once again steered the conversation back to classified documents.
Reading all of this you can see exactly how Special Counsel Hur came to the conclusion that a jury would likely see Biden as an amiable old man with a poor memory. No doubt Biden’s testimony on the stand would have been just as random and aimless at times. Perhaps he’d have told a jury how to launch a car, complete with engine noises. No one would have believed the old guy was up to no good despite the evidence showing Biden knew he had classified documents in his house and read portions of them to his ghost writer.
If the transcripts were supposed to help Biden, I think they only did so because the media is willing to find “nuance” where the evidence of a poor memory and a wandering mind is abundantly clear.