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After Special Counsel Robert Hur’s 2023 investigation and the subsequent report into former President Joe Biden’s retention of classified documents, Democrats rushed to defend the 46th president from his characterization that Biden was an “elderly man with a poor memory.”
The left-wing’s narrative surrounding Biden’s mental cognition — especially as he was running for reelection against President Donald Trump — is now crumbling after audio tapes from the investigation were revealed Monday night.
Prominent Democrats lined up to defend Biden when the initial report was released in 2024, many using the same line that Hur’s report was “gratuitous.” Then-Vice President Kamala Harris was chief among the chorus of defenders, saying that the report was “inaccurate and inappropriate.”
“The way that the President’s demeanor in that report was characterized could not be more wrong on the facts,” she told reporters at an event in Washington at the time. She also said the report was “clearly politically motivated, gratuitous.” Months later, Biden dropped out of the presidential race and was replaced on the ticket by his No. 2 without a primary election to decide his replacement.
President Joe Biden pauses as he concludes his address to the nation from the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, July 24, 2024, about his decision to drop his Democratic presidential reelection bid. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, Pool)
BIDEN’S HUR INTERVIEW TAPES COULD NOW GO PUBLIC AFTER HIS ATTORNEYS WAVE WHITE FLAG
“What everyone will soon realize is that this is a Republican special counsel who completely went out of his way to editorialize, to include material in his report that is unnecessary and irrelevant to what he was tasked with doing,” Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., piled on in comments to ABC at the time.
Hur’s appointment was nonpartisan.
In 2023, Hur was investigating Biden for retaining classified information. At the center of the investigation were audio tapes of Biden from interviews with his “Promise Me, Dad” memoir ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer, from 2016 and 2017.
Hur’s report concluded that Biden did, in fact, retain classified documents, but that prosecuting him might not lead to a conviction, because he could be viewed “as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
“Mr. Biden’s memory was significantly limited, both during his recorded interviews with the ghostwriter in 2017 and in his interview with our office in 2023,” the report said.
Former Special Counsel Robert Hur returns from a short break to resume his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill on March 12, 2024, in Washington, D.C. Hur investigated President Joe Biden’s mishandling of classified documents and published a final report with contentious conclusions about Biden’s memory. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
BIDEN’S FIGHT TO KEEP HUR INTERVIEW TAPES UNDER WRAPS SUFFERS FRESH COURT BLOW
After a prolonged legal battle during which Biden sought to keep the audio tapes private, a nonprofit called the Oversight Project obtained them via public records requests. The damning tapes reveal Biden’s inability to remember basic names and dates.
In one instance, on April 24, 2017, Biden struggled to recall the names of two economic advisers.
“I’ll think of his name,” said Biden, who at the time was a private citizen and former vice president. “I should write the names down because I keep forgetting them.”
There was then a long pause before Zwonitzer prompted Biden by saying Alan Krueger’s name.
Vice President Kamala Harris spoke at the American Federation of Teachers’ 88th National Convention on July 25, 2024, in Houston, Texas. (Montinique Monroe/Getty Images)
In another instance, when trying to recall a memorial he attended for a fallen service member, Biden forgot the date of the service and name of the deceased.
“I think I went to that memorial service in Wilmington. It says [REDACTED] December the 4th, but I don’t — I know what this means. Memorial service — [REDACTED] gets names really f—ed up,” said Biden.
“So it says memorial service for [REDACTED]. I don’t think her name was [REDACTED]. Or I forget [REDACTED].”
The interviews were marked by consistent lapses in memory.
But in 2024, that didn’t stop Democrats from accusing Hur of being a partisan activist who intentionally tried to tarnish Biden and his chances in a rematch against Trump.
Andrew Weissman, a former general counsel to the FBI, cried foul on MSNBC.
“That is not the role of the Department of Justice … to talk about your memory today — irrelevant, it is gratuitous,” he reportedly said. “And it is also exactly what you’re not supposed to do, which is putting your thumb on the scale that could have political repercussions.”
Andrew Weissman, the top prosecutor from the Russia investigation, confessed he has a “man crush” on the judge overseeing Trump’s hush money trial. (MSNBC)
Ian Sams, a spokesperson for Biden’s general counsel, said at the time that the report was “gratuitous.”
“When you are the first special counsel in history not to indict anybody, there is pressure to criticize and to make, you know, statements that maybe in otherwise you wouldn’t make,” Sams reportedly said.
“I think this issue of age is already out there, and when November comes, it’s going to be a choice between two people,” said Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., told POLITICO. “I was with a congressional leadership about two weeks ago, and no one walked out of that meeting, saying, ‘Oh, my God, it was like he wasn’t in charge.’”
Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., who at the time had just spent a day traveling with Biden, insisted that he was, “at the very top of his game, all the way through it, both in private and in person.”
Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) listens as U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell testifies at a Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee hearing on the Fed’s “Semiannual Monetary Policy Report to the Congress,” on Capitol Hill on March 3, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Tom Williams-Pool/Getty Images)
Later in 2024, Biden was yanked from the top of the presidential ticket after an embarrassing debate performance against then-candidate Donald Trump, which showcased his apparent mental decline.
Harris, serving as vice president at the time, was then coronated as the party’s presidential nominee despite never winning a primary. When she ran in 2020, Harris never made it to the primaries, dropping out on December 3, 2019, months before the first elections took place.
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A Biden spokesperson ducked the former president’s memory in a statement to CBS.
“President Biden’s conversations for a book a decade ago that discussed his late son are private, and were provided to the Department of Justice on the express condition they stay that way,” TJ Ducklo told the outlet. “Reversing course and making them public is just the latest example of this Administration weaponizing the DOJ for political retribution.”
“It’s wrong, and while President Biden disagrees with today’s decision, he also respects the courts and the vital role an independent judiciary plays in a healthy democracy.”