Recent audio recordings from 2023 capture Joe Biden’s conversations with special counsel Robert Hur, revealing the president’s memory issues. In one particularly unsettling instance, Biden appears to struggle with remembering the date of his son Beau’s passing.
While holding office, Biden claimed executive privilege over these tapes from his interview with the former special counsel Hur, who described Biden as ‘elderly,’ ‘forgetful,’ and having ‘diminished faculties.’
On Friday, audio excerpts from Biden’s sessions with federal prosecutors were released, reigniting discussions about Biden’s health amidst ongoing media coverage.
A then-80-year old Biden fails to recall when his son Beau passed away and even when he left office as vice president under Barack Obama in an interview recorded seven months before the debate disaster against Donald Trump that effectively ended his re-election run.
Hur asserted during the investigation over the mishandling of classified evidence that jurors would see the president as ‘a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.’
The audio shows Biden – who has long had a stutter – slurring his words, losing his thought process and not being able to recall important facts about his own life.
At one point, he can even be heard asking: ‘Am I making any sense to you?’
Hur was appointed special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland in January 2022 to investigate the president’s handling of classified files based on a range of areas including Afghanistan.
Newly-released recordings of Joe Biden speaking to special counsel Robert Hur in 2023 show the declining president’s memory lapses as he struggles to remember when his son Beau died
A then-80-year old Biden fails to recall when his son Beau passed away and even when he left office as vice president under Barack Obama in an interview recorded seven months before the debate disaster against Donald Trump that effectively ended his re-election run
The Biden administration had already released transcripts of the interviews taking place on October 8 and October 9, 2023 had already revealed that Biden’s lawyer had to tell him what year his son Beau died of brain cancer and the president joked about the special counsel finding pictures of his wife in a swimsuit.
‘What was happening though was… What month did Beau die?’ Biden mused at one point, adding, ‘Oh God, May 30th.’
A White House lawyer then chimed in with the year, 2015.
‘Was it 2015 he died?’ Biden asked.
He leads into the confusion by suggesting Beau died in either 2017 or 2018, or even earlier than that, as he’s discussing his 2008 presidential run.
Biden asks Hur: ‘This is what, 2017, 18, in that area?’
When Hur affirms, Biden says: ‘Remember, in this time frame, my son is … uh … would’ve been deployed or is dying 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.’
Beau deployed between 2008 and 2009, at the beginning of Biden’s first term as vice president.
Ex-Special Counsel Robert Hur (pictured) asserted during the investigation over the mishandling of classified evidence that jurors would see the president as ‘a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory
Hur argued: ‘I understood that my explanation about this case had to include rigorous, detailed, and thorough analysis.
‘In other words, I needed to show my work,’ he will say. ‘I knew that for my decision to be credible, I could not simply announce that I recommended no criminal charges and leave it at that. I needed to explain why.’
Hur added that he had to call Biden’s memory into question and could not make a charging decision without assessing the ‘President’s state of mind’.
‘For that reason, I had to consider the President’s memory and overall mental state, and how a jury likely would perceive his memory and mental state in a criminal trial,’ he’ll say.
‘Because these issues were important to my ultimate decision, I had to include a discussion of them in my report.
‘I did not sanitize my explanation. Nor did I disparage the President unfairly.
‘I explained to the Attorney General my decision and the reasons for it. That’s what I was required to do’.
Hur’s report, summarizing his probe of Biden’s mishandling of classified documents, contains a multitude of examples of Biden’s ‘hazy’ memory, including one point where Biden appeared to forget when his son Beau died.
Hur insisted that Biden was not fit for prosecution over his mishandling of documents because he was a ‘well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.’
The special counsel noted Biden had ‘diminished faculties’ and at points ‘did not remember when he was vice president.’
Biden and his aides pushed back aggressively against Hur’s report, which they characterized as a partisan hit.
The president was at that time – early 2024 – still planning to run for a second term and fending off accusations that he was too old for another four years in the job.
Republicans jumped on the material, saying it proves Biden isn’t fit to run the country.
This is a developing story.
