By Mike Memoli—
NBC News
Special counsel Robert Hur's incendiary report on President Joe Biden's handling of classified documents concluded that the president was an "old man with a bad memory" unable to remember key dates, including when he was vice president and the year he was vice president. his son died.
Biden then lashed out at Hur for bringing up Beau Biden's death, and his lawyers have been critical of the report.
However, the transcript of the interview with the president paints a more complex picture.
Although the president claimed that Hur was the one who first mentioned the death of his son Beau, the transcript shows that it was the president who did so.
Biden, who often appeared to be thinking out loud when answering questions, at other times did recall in detail specific events from his time as vice president.
Special Counsel Robert Hur at the White House, July 27, 2017. Alex Brandon / AP file
Biden was interviewed by Hur on Sunday, October 8, for three and a half hours, and another 90 minutes the next day.
The moment was tense, since a serious international crisis broke out on October 7 when Hamas attacked Israel.
Biden faced a barrage of questions from Hur and another federal prosecutor about the secret documents he handled as vice president, where and how he kept them and why some sensitive papers remained in his possession for more than five years after he left office.
[Prosecutor Hur will testify before a committee about interviews with Biden over classified documents]
At one point, Hur warned that some of the questions he would ask “would refer to events that occurred years ago.”
Biden joked in his response: “I'm a young man, so there's no problem.”
What does the transcript reveal?
According to review of the transcript, Biden sometimes expanded beyond the narrow topic areas of certain questions.
At one point, he described in vivid detail a visit to Mongolia in 2011, in which he displayed unexpected bow skills during a cultural gala in his honor.
Biden also stated several times that he could not remember any specific incidents or why, for example, some materials were stored in a certain way.
At times, he or his attorneys questioned the relevance or accuracy of prosecutors' questions, and the president even questioned the logic of one of Hur's interrogations.
The full transcript has not been made public.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio;
and Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., requested it along with other materials related to the investigation.
Biden allies believe that a full reading of the transcript will only strengthen their argument that Hur's characterization of him during the interview was not based in reality.
If anything, they argue, Hur's sometimes confusing questions may have contributed to the confusion.
Hur defends his comments about Biden's age before Congress
Hur's assessment of Biden's mental fitness took center stage in his first public appearance since the report was issued last month, testifying Tuesday before Republican committees on Capitol Hill.
Hur defended before Congress his investigation, the final report and its mention of Biden's age.
“I knew that for my decision to be credible, I couldn't just announce that I was recommending against filing criminal charges and leave it at that.
I had to explain why,” explained the special prosecutor.
When discussing the president's age, Hur said his characterization was “necessary and accurate and fair.”
“What I wrote is what I believe the evidence shows, and what I hope the jurors will perceive and believe,” he added.
“I did not disparage the president unfairly.”
Did you remember the year of your son's death or not?
Although the White House welcomed Hur's decision not to file criminal charges, the president's allies angrily protested the report he submitted to the Justice Department.
Bob Bauer, the president's personal attorney, accused Hur of having “exceeded” his role as an investigator and said his report “fleaches the department's regulations and standards.”
[Biden jokes about his age in a new campaign ad: “I am very young, vigorous and handsome”]
In a letter to Hur before the report was released, Bauer and Richard Sauber, the president's special counsel, said the prosecutor's comments about Biden's memoir were neither "accurate nor appropriate" and used "highly biased language." to describe a common fact among witnesses: the lack of memory about events that occurred years ago.”
Speaking to reporters the night the report came out, Biden expressed anger at Hur's suggestion that he didn't remember
“even when his son Beau died.”
“How the hell dare you raise that?” Biden condemned.
“I don't need anyone, I don't need anyone to remind me when he passed away.”
Hur's investigation, which lasted a year, led him to delve into the ins and outs of what has perhaps been the most tense period of half a century of public life for Biden, who left the office of vice president in 2017, almost two years after burying to his son.
Beau Biden's battle with cancer and the decision he would make not to run for president in 2016 began an unpredictable series of events that would ultimately lead him back to the White House in 2021.
It was in trying to share part of that chronology that Biden, in his interview with Hur, made an error that the special counsel ended up citing in the harsh conclusions of his report.
However, although Biden asserted that Hur brought up the subject of his son's death, it was the president himself who brought up the subject first.
About halfway through the first day of his interview, Hur asked him where he might have kept the secret documents after leaving the vice presidency in 2017.
“Remember, during this period, my son was either deployed or dying,” Biden said.
As he continued to remember the time, he seemed to conflate the moment when he considered running in the 2016 election, in the months after Beau Biden's death in 2015, with when he began to consider a 2020 candidacy.
“Even though I was at Penn,” he said, referring to the Penn Biden Center, created after he stepped down as vice president, “I hadn't gotten away from the idea that I might run for office again.”
Biden then asked what month his son had died, before quickly stating the date: May 30.
The transcript indicated that others present intervened to specify the year: 2015.
“And Trump was elected in November 2017,” he added, before the transcript indicated that another participant corrected him to say 2016.
"Yeah true.
But that’s when Trump swears him in,” he noted, before going on to describe the book
Promise Me, Dad
, which he would spend the next year writing, documenting the years before and after the death of his son.
“This is personal,” he added.
There were other moments during the two days of questioning when Biden appeared to wrongly align specific events with their correct years.
When talking about a move in 2019 from a house he rented in Virginia to Delaware, he said he needed the furniture to set up a home studio to make media appearances during the coronavirus pandemic, which began a year later.
Other topics addressed in the interrogation
Those moments are likely to serve Republicans, eager to continue politically attacking Biden's ability to continue serving in office.
Hur's hearing this Tuesday comes a few days after the president's appearance in the State of the Union speech, which was applauded by his fellow Democrats.
A full reading of the more than 250 pages of transcripts reveals often mundane and protracted discussions between Biden and prosecutors about how he handled classified documents as vice president and how his belongings were transported between the White House, his Delaware home and other places.
During the two days of questioning, pauses were minimal and Biden often rejected suggestions that he take one.
“I prefer to continue.
I will continue all night if we finish this,” he indicated towards the end of the first day's session.
Biden's lawyers sometimes intervened when they disagreed with prosecutors' line of questioning, and at one point Bauer told Hur that he should not "put him in a position where he has to speculate or create assumptions, or try to do detective work.”
“I think we are following a lead that seems confusing to me,” Bauer added at another point.
“Obviously, they are trying to establish something
,” Biden surmised.
Biden's long career in foreign policy was evident from beginning to end.
The sessions began with Hur acknowledging, without specifying, the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7.
“I know there are many other things happening in the world that demand your attention,” Hur began.
“One may interrupt us,” Biden responded, adding that she had just spoken with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
At another point, Biden described the role he played as President Barack Obama's number two.
“I would be the guy who basically took the brunt, which I was willing to do because I knew as much as they did,” Biden said, referring to early deliberations in the Obama Administration over the future of the war in Afghanistan.
He also noted that some of the issues he dealt with as vice president continue today.
A significantly redacted portion of the transcript appears in the context of meetings Biden held as vice president with lawmakers regarding the Iran nuclear deal.
And when talking about the elements that Justice Department officials found about Pope Francis' visit to the United States in 2015, the president noted that he remains in contact with him.
Biden's jokes during the interview
Even amid tense discussions, Biden often found ways to lighten the mood.
On several occasions he mocked investigators for searching his properties.
“I hope they haven't found racy photos of my wife in a swimsuit, which they probably have.
“She is beautiful,” Biden noted at one point.
[Biden reacts upset to classified documents report suggesting his memory is limited]
After a lengthy discussion about the boxes found in Biden's garage, Hur asked his colleagues if there were any other questions.
"Yeah.
When am I going to clean up the rest?” Biden joked.
At one point, the president seemed especially interested in talking about his love of cars, in connection with the questioning about the boxes found near his Corvette.
At one point, the transcript includes the “sound of a car” to capture Biden's comments.