The Trump administration, possibly as soon as Saturday, is planning to release the audio of former President Joe Biden’s interview with then-special counsel Robert Hur in the classified documents case, Politico reported Friday.
The Biden administration refused to release the audio of the October 2023 interviews that led Hur not to prosecute, asserting that a jury would find Biden "a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory."
The White House and Democrat leadership excoriated Hur for the remark, accusing the former prosecutor of smearing Biden in a politically motivated attack. However, after Axios obtained and published the audio of the interview on Friday, the outlet reported it’s now clear why the White House under Biden only released the transcript and not the audio.
Amid long and “uncomfortable” pauses in his interviews with Hur from Oct. 8-9, 2023, Biden struggled to remember when his son Beau died, when President Donald Trump was first elected, when he himself left the White House as vice president, and why he had classified documents at his properties, Axios reported.
“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,” Axios reported.
A Biden spokesman downplayed the significance of the audio’s release.
“The transcripts were released by the Biden administration more than a year ago,” Kelly Scully told Politico. “The audio does nothing but confirm what is already public.”
Not according to Axios, however.
“The audio shows what the transcript lacks — the president's dry-whisper voice and the long silences as he struggles to find the right words or dates. Those often were supplied by his attorneys, who acted as caretakers of his memory,” Axios reported.
The audio foreshadows Biden’s halting and dry-whisper voice that the White House blamed on a cold during the June 27, 2024, debate against Trump, according to the report.
Biden asserted executive privilege in keeping the audio under wraps. House Republicans threatened then-U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland with contempt of Congress for refusing to release the audio to them. The Department of Justice on June 14 said that Garland would not be prosecuted.
The debate, the performance in which would end Biden’s reelection bid in mid-July, happened less than two weeks later.
Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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