The findings of Special Counsel Robert Hur in February 2024 regarding then-President Joe Biden’s memory issues marked the official beginning of the unraveling of the narrative crafted by Biden’s apologists on the issue of his mental acuity.
Hur’s report, which was based on interviews done to see if there was any “there” there to the allegations of Biden improperly retaining and carelessly storing classified documents, sparked a firestorm on the left and in the media, whose outrage centered primarily on the following line from the detailed document:
We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.
That assessment, made in one of the most consequential presidential election years in American history, kicked off a vicious smear campaign against Hur, who was accused of being a partisan plant who supposedly was angling for a job in a potential Donald Trump administration despite the fact that Hur was appointed by Biden DOJ Attorney General Merrick Garland to oversee the investigation.
The smears started right at the top, with Biden himself holding a press conference where he chewed Hur out for the questions asked about his deceased son, Beau Biden (even though Hur wasn’t the one who brought up his son – Biden was), apparently embarrassed over the revelation by Hur that Biden couldn’t recall the year Beau Biden passed away:
Leaning on her prosecutorial experience, Vice President Kamala Harris proclaimed that “the comments that were made by that prosecutor [were] gratuitous, inaccurate and inappropriate.”
“…we should expect that there would be a higher level of integrity than what we saw,” Harris also stated, while characterizing the report as “clearly politically motivated, gratuitous.”
The Biden-Harris White House was urged to release the audio from the interviews in the interest of transparency, but they refused, perhaps knowing that they would in effect prove Hur to be correct in his assessments.
Though Biden’s disastrous June 2024 debate performance against then-GOP nominee Donald Trump was a vindication of sorts for Hur, the audio clips shared Friday by Axios reporter Alex Thompson would prove to be the ultimate vindication:
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.
Below is the first of three clips Thompson shared, which contains the audio from the most talked-about portion of the transcript. In a second tweet, Thompson highlights all the pauses, which he noted were key to Hur’s conclusions about how Biden, in Hur’s view, would likely be perceived by a jury:
Here are the two other clips, where you hear Biden’s lawyer continue to intervene at times on his behalf:
The release of the audio clips on top of what we already knew about Biden’s decline and some of the newer revelations included in the forthcoming book Thompson co-authored with CNN‘s Jake Tapper prompted many to share their thoughts, with some conservative commentators even demanding a Biden Commission to investigate who knew what and when:
Seconded.
-Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter/X.-
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