Transcript of Biden’s interview with particular counsel Robert Hur exhibits reminiscence lapses — but additionally detailed exchanges

WASHINGTON — Particular counsel Robert Hur’s bombshell report on President Joe Biden’s dealing with of labeled paperwork concluded that he offered as an “aged man with a poor reminiscence” who was unable to recollect key dates, together with when he served as vp and the yr his son died.

Biden, for his half, has lambasted Hur for mentioning the subject of Beau Biden’s demise, and his legal professionals have criticized the report. 

However the transcript of Biden’s interview, which was reviewed by NBC Information, paints a extra nuanced image on either side.

Regardless of the president’s assertion that Hur introduced up his son Beau’s demise first, the transcript exhibits that it was Biden himself who did so, as NBC News has reported. 

Biden, who usually gave the impression to be pondering out loud in response to particular questions, at different factors recollects intimately particular occasions from his time as vp. 

Biden spoke with Hur for 3½ hours on Sunday, Oct. 8, and for 90 extra minutes the following day. The timing was fraught, with a significant worldwide disaster having damaged out on Oct. 7 when Hamas attacked Israel. 

Biden confronted a barrage of questions from Hur and one other federal prosecutor about paperwork he noticed as vp, the place and the way he saved them and why some delicate supplies remained in his possession for greater than 5 years after he left workplace as vp. 

At one level, Hur acknowledged that a few of the questions he would ask would “relate to occasions that occurred years in the past.” Biden joked in response: “I am a younger man, so it isn’t an issue.”

In keeping with the evaluate of the transcript, Biden at occasions expanded past the slender topic areas of specific questions. At one level, he described in vivid element a 2011 go to to Mongolia, the place he displayed sudden archery expertise at a cultural efficiency in his honor.

Biden additionally usually mentioned he couldn’t recall a particular incident or why, as an illustration, sure gadgets had been packed in sure methods. And at occasions, he or his attorneys challenged the prosecutors in regards to the relevance or accuracy of questions they posed, with Biden at one level difficult the logic of one in all Hur’s traces of questioning. 

The total transcript has not been launched. Home Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., subpoenaed it and different supplies associated to the investigation.

Biden allies consider a full studying of the transcript will solely bolster their rivalry that Hur’s characterization of Biden in the course of the interview was not primarily based in actuality. If something, they argue, Hur’s at-times meandering questioning might have contributed to the confusion.

Hur’s evaluation of Biden’s psychological health is prone to be entrance and middle as Hur makes his first public look because the report was launched final month, testifying Tuesday earlier than Republican-led committees on Capitol Hill.

In his opening assertion, Hur deliberate to defend his investigation, the ultimate report and his remedy of Biden’s age.

“I knew that for my choice to be credible, I couldn’t merely announce that I advisable no felony expenses and go away it at that. I wanted to elucidate why,” Hur deliberate to say, in line with an advance copy of his remarks.

In discussing the president’s age, Hur will say that his characterization was “needed and correct and honest.”

“What I wrote is what I consider the proof exhibits, and what I count on jurors would understand and consider,” he’ll say. “I didn’t sanitize my rationalization. Nor did I disparage the President unfairly.”

In a letter to Hur earlier than the report was launched, Bauer and Richard Sauber, particular counsel to the president, mentioned that Hur’s feedback about Biden’s reminiscence weren’t “accurate or appropriate” and that they used “extremely prejudicial language to explain a commonplace incidence amongst witnesses: an absence of recall of years-old occasions.”

Talking to reporters the night time the report got here out, Biden flashed anger at Hur’s suggestion that he didn’t recall, “even inside a number of years, when his son Beau died.”

“How within the hell dare he increase that?” Biden said. “I do not want anybody, I do not want anybody to remind me of when he handed away.”

Hur’s yearlong probe took him deep within the weeds of maybe probably the most fraught interval of Biden’s half-century in public life. Biden left workplace in 2017, almost two years after he buried his son. Beau Biden’s most cancers battle and the choice Biden would make later to not search the presidency in 2016 started an unpredictable sequence of occasions that will in the end take him again to the White Home in 2021.

It was in making an attempt to share a few of that timeline that Biden, in his interview with Hur, made a mistake that Hur in the end seized on in his report’s damning conclusion.

However despite the fact that Biden mentioned Hur introduced up the topic of his son’s demise, it was, as NBC News has reported, first raised by Biden himself. Roughly halfway via the primary day of his interview, Hur requested Biden about the place he may need saved paperwork associated to the work he was engaged in after he left the vice presidency in 2017.

“Keep in mind, on this timeframe, my son is — both been deployed or is dying,” Biden mentioned. 

As he continued pondering again to the interval, he appeared to conflate his consideration of working within the 2016 election, within the months after Beau Biden died in 2015, with the early concerns of a 2020 bid after he left workplace. 

“Although I am at Penn,” he mentioned, referring to the Penn Biden Heart, which was established after he left workplace, “I hadn’t walked away from the concept that I’ll run for workplace once more.”

Biden then requested what month his son died earlier than rapidly stating the date: Could 30. The transcript signifies others current interjected to specify the yr: 2015. 

“And Trump bought elected in November of 2017,” he mentioned, earlier than the transcript signifies one other participant corrected him to say 2016. 

“Yeah, OK. However that is when Trump will get sworn in then,” he mentioned, earlier than he went into an outline of the ebook “Promise Me, Dad,” which he would spend the following yr writing, documenting the years main as much as and following his son’s demise.

“That is private,” he mentioned.

There have been different factors in the course of the two days of questioning when Biden appeared to misalign particular occasions to the appropriate years. Discussing the shifting of things in 2019 from a house he rented in Virginia to Delaware, he mentioned he wanted the furnishings to arrange a house studio to do media appearances in the course of the coronavirus pandemic, which started a yr later.

These moments are doubtless to supply fodder for Republicans desperate to additional political assaults on Biden’s skill to proceed serving in workplace. Tuesday’s listening to comes simply days after Biden’s performance in the State of the Union tackle, which was applauded by fellow Democrats. 

A full studying of the greater than 250 pages of the transcripts reveals usually mundane and extended back-and-forth discussions between Biden and the prosecutors in regards to the methods he reviewed labeled paperwork as vp and the way his belongings had been transported among the many White Home, his Delaware dwelling and different places.

The 2 days of questioning had minimal breaks, with Biden usually rejecting options to pause the proceedings. 

“I might reasonably simply hold going. I will go all night time if we get this achieved,” he mentioned towards the tip of the primary day’s session.

Biden’s legal professionals at occasions interjected once they took situation with prosecutors’ line of questioning, with Bauer at one level telling Hur he mustn’t “put him able the place he has to take a position or create assumptions, or attempt to have interaction in detective work.”

“I believe we’re form of happening a path right here that I discover complicated,” Bauer mentioned at one other level. “They’re clearly making an attempt to ascertain one thing,” Biden surmised. 

Biden’s career-long work in overseas coverage was evident from begin to end. The classes started with Hur acknowledging, with out specifying, the Oct. 7 Hamas assault on Israel.

“I do know there’s lots of different issues on the earth occurring that demand your consideration,” Hur started. “We could also be interrupted by one,” Biden responded, including he had simply spoken to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Biden at one other level described the position he performed as President Barack Obama’s No. 2.

“I might be the man that’d mainly take the warmth, which I used to be ready to do as a result of I knew as a lot as they did,” Biden mentioned, referring to early deliberations within the Obama administration about the way forward for the warfare in Afghanistan. 

He additionally famous that a few of the points he was coping with as vp proceed at the moment. One considerably redacted a part of the transcript comes within the context of Biden’s recalling conferences he held as vp with lawmakers in reference to the Iran nuclear deal. And discussing gadgets Justice Division officers discovered about Pope Francis’ go to to the U.S. in 2015, Biden famous he stays in contact with Francis.

“He is my ticket,” Biden mentioned, earlier than making it clear he was joking.