The transcript from Special Counsel Robert Hur’s interview with President Joe Biden is confirming a key detail of his report.
On Tuesday, the transcript from the president’s interview was released and it showed that it was Biden who brought up his son’s death — not the special counsel.
In the interview Hur asked the Biden about “documents relating to the Penn Biden Center, or the Biden Institute, or the Cancer Moonshot, or your book” and where he kept the papers “related to those things that you were actively working on.”
“Well, um… I, I, I, I, I don’t know. This is, what 2017, 2018, that area?” Biden responded.
When Hur confirmed that was the correct time, the president said, “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.”
Biden not only forgets the year his son Beau died, he makes very clear that in the years after his vice presidency when he was “at Penn,” he believed Beau was alive. Beau died in 2015. pic.twitter.com/oeOurpus7R
— Brent Scher (@BrentScher) March 12, 2024
Biden went on, apparently referring to his decision not to run in 2016, as he noted the death of his son, Beau Biden, and asked, “What month die Beau die? Oh, God, May 30th.”
A White House lawyer added, “2015.”
“Was it 2015 he had died? Biden asked.
Another person added, “May 2015.”
CBS News notes throughout the interview, “[Biden] also misstates the year former President Donald Trump was elected and questions which year his own vice presidency ended. Mr. Biden is quickly corrected by attorneys in the room. Throughout the interview, Mr. Biden appears to be reaching for words he cannot find. Twice, the phrase ‘fax machine’ eludes him, and he confuses Iraq and Afghanistan for Iran.”
In a report last month, Hur declined to charge the president for his handling of classified, but offered several shocking claims in his report about the president’s memory, including that he did not remember “even within several years, when his son Beau died.”
Biden sought to push back on that in a press conference as he said, “There is even reference that I don’t remember when my son died. How in the hell dare he raise that?”
He added, “Frankly, when I was asked the question I thought to myself, it wasn’t any of their damn business.”
After Biden’s comments, NBC News, citing “two people familiar with Hur’s five-hour interview with the president, reported, “Biden raised his son’s death after being asked about his workflow at a Virginia rental home from 2016 to 2018, the sources said, when a ghost writer was helping him write a memoir about losing Beau to brain cancer in 2015.”
“Biden began trying to recall that period by discussing what else was happening in his life, and it was at that point in the interview that he appeared confused about when Beau died, the sources said. Biden got the date — May 30 — correct, but not the year,” it added. “Sources familiar with Biden’s view of the interview say Hur induced the president to bring up his son by asking a series of personal questions related to Beau. They included questions about Biden’s memoir, ‘Promise Me, Dad,’ in which he writes about his son’s battle with cancer and death in 2015.”
