Biden-Robert Hur audio: Transcript of everything ex-Prez said in the infamous interview
The audio of former President Joe Biden's interview with former special counsel Robert Hur in the classified documents case was published
The audio of former President Joe Biden's interview with former special counsel Robert Hur in the classified documents case was published by Axios on Friday. In the final investigation report, Hur had said that Biden, 81 at the time, was a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory'.
In the audio, Biden could be heard struggling to recall key events, including when his son Beau died and when he left office as vice president. The six-hour recording, obtained by Axios, also captures extended pauses, a faint, whispery tone, and the Democrat's reliance on aides to fill in missing details.
The White House had refused to release the tapes last year, arguing they would be “distorted” for partisan gain.
In one moment from the October 2023 session, Biden paused for nearly 10 seconds between phrases, trying to recall the origin of his 2017 memoir. “Okay, yeah… Beau had passed and… this is personal… the genesis… of the book and the title Promise Me, Dad was a… I know you're all close with your sons and daughters, but Beau was like my right arm and Hunt was my left.”
During questioning, Biden also admitted, “I just don’t remember,” when asked about a 2017 comment to his ghostwriter that he had “found all the classified stuff downstairs.” When reminded by prosecutors of the quote, Biden repeated, “I don’t remember… and I’m not supposed to speculate, right?”
At one point, attorney Bob Bauer instructed the president to answer a key question with, “Your answer is that you don’t know.”
When Biden later suggested he may have kept a classified Afghanistan memo “for posterity’s sake,” Bauer quickly interjected, saying: “He does not recall specifically intending to keep this memo after he left the vice presidency.”
Biden spokesperson Kelly Scully downplayed the impact of the tapes, telling Axios: “The transcripts were released by the Biden administration more than a year ago. The audio does nothing but confirm what is already public.”
Here is the complete transcript:
"So, during this time when you were living on Chambers Road and there were documents related to the Penn Biden Center or the Biden Center, or the cancer from your shot, or your book, where did you keep papers that related to those things that you were actively working on?” Hur asked.
“Well, I don't know. This is what, 2017, 18, that period?” Biden said, only for an affirmation from Robert Hur.
“Remember, in this time frame, my son has either been deployed or was dying. And so it was... And by the way, there were still a lot of people at the time when I got out of the Senate who were encouraging me to run in this period, except the president.”
“They're not mean things. He just thought that she had a better shot of winning the presidency than I did. And so I hadn't at this point even thought.”
“I'm at Penn. I hadn't walked away from the idea that I might run for office again. If I ran again, I'd be running for president. And so what was happening, though, once Beau died — May, was it 2015 he had died?”
“I think it was 2015. I'm not sure the month, but I think it was 2015.”
"Trump gets elected in November of 2017 — 2016, alright, so 2017, that's when you left office in January of 2017. Okay. That's when Trump gets sworn in, right?
“And in 2017, Beau had passed... this is personal. The genesis of the book and the title Promise Me, Dad was — I know you're all close with your sons and daughters — but Beau was like my right arm, and Hunt was my left. These guys were a year and a day apart, and they could finish each other's sentences.”
"I used to go home on the train during the period that I was still in the Senate. Anyway, if you remember, there was pressure. Beau knew how much I adored him. And, and, and it sounds — maybe it sounds so — everybody knew how close we were. There was not anybody in the world who wondered whether or not... anyway."
