Newly Released Biden-Hur Audio Captures Former President’s Stumbles from Special Counsel Interview

Newly released audio from then-President Joe Biden’s lengthy interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur captures Biden’s diminished mental acuity in his failure to recall the year his son Beau passed away, the year his vice presidency ended, the year President Donald Trump was first elected, and why he possessed certain classified documents.

Biden’s long pauses and incoherent ramblings in response to light questioning from Hur are apparent in over four minutes of audio first reported by Axios on Friday night. The partial release fulfills expectations that the Trump administration would finally disclose the long-anticipated interview tape after Biden’s administration obstructed its disclosure at every turn.

Mistakenly, Biden said in the interview that his son Beau died in 2017 and had to be reminded that he passed away in 2015. Biden also said Trump was first elected in 2017 and had to be corrected that Trump won the presidency in 2016.

“OK, yeah. In 2017, 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,” Biden said at one point in the interview audio, with lengthy pauses peppered throughout.

Biden also can be heard stumbling over his words and whispering throughout the audio, two aspects of the interview the transcripts fail to fully capture. Biden struggled to explain why he possessed classified documents, and he veered into rambling, storytelling territory about his decision not to run for president in 2016. Hur interviewed Biden over the course of two three-hour-long sessions on October 8 and 9, 2023.

Beau Biden died of brain cancer in 2015, an event that factored into Biden’s decision not to seek the presidency in 2016. Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016 and took office in January 2017 to succeed former President Obama.

Hur investigated Biden for potentially mishandling classified documents from his Senate and vice-presidential tenures. His February 2024 report labeled Biden “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” and argued that he would present as such in front of a jury. Although Hur found evidence that Biden “willfully” retained and disclosed classified materials, he declined to pursue criminal charges against the sitting president.

The audio disclosure comes amid a fresh reckoning about Biden’s mental decline during his presidency spurred by Axios reporter Alex Thompson and CNN host Jake Tapper’s book, Original Sin, detailing the lengths of Biden’s decline and the cover-up surrounding it. Thompson, a journalist with a lengthy track record of hard-hitting reporting on Biden’s mental faculties, was one of the Axios reporters who obtained the Biden-Hur audio snippet.

At the time of Hur’s report, Biden’s allies in the Democratic Party and news media rushed to defend his mental capabilities. They questioned Hur’s credibility and partisan allegiances, even when the transcripts from Hur’s interview clearly reflected stumbles on Biden’s part.

The Biden administration even attempted to influence the media into covering Hur’s report more generously and claimed reporters were ignoring the substance of Hur’s investigation. Upon the release of Hur’s report, an angry Biden held a bumbling press conference in which he confused the presidents of Egypt and Mexico.

The audio release further vindicate’s Hur assertions about Biden’s mental lapses and memory struggles, which came months before Biden’s disastrous debate performance caused him to eventually drop out of the presidential race. The debate instantly sent shock waves throughout the American political landscape because of Biden’s repeated mental lapses, stumbles, and bizarre responses to moderator questions.

In March 2024, Hur testified about his investigation and the reasons why he felt it was necessary to include details about Biden’s age and cognitive abilities. Although the transcripts appeared to justify Hur’s observations, Democratic lawmakers nonetheless called him a partisan hack and suggested he sought a job in the next Trump administration.

Before Hur released the report, the Biden White House attempted to pressure him into editing parts of it focusing on Biden’s age. Attorney General Merrick Garland later dismissed critics who argued that he should have intervened to water down Hur’s report.

After a lengthy process of trying to obtain the audio, House Republicans voted in June 2024 to hold Garland in contempt of Congress following the Biden administration’s decision to withhold the tapes under the guise of executive privilege. The Justice Department declined to prosecute Garland on contempt charges after the House GOP’s vote.

A coalition of news organizations and conservative groups also pursued the audio through the Freedom of Information Act. The Justice Department argued that Biden’s audio could be manipulated by artificial intelligence and downplayed the public’s interest in the audio throughout the litigation.

Biden’s horrendous debate performance against Trump in June 2024 led to a Democratic revolt that culminated in his decision to step aside from the presidential race a month later. Biden immediately endorsed then-Vice President Kamala Harris, who became the Democratic nominee without a competitive primary challenge.

Numerous opinion polls showed Biden’s age was already a pressing concern for the American people before the debate performance made it an issue that Democrats and the mainstream media could no longer ignore. Conservatives had been critical of Biden’s countless slip-ups and apparent mental decline dating back to his 2020 presidential campaign and the start of his presidential term.

Despite Biden’s unpopularity, Harris refused to distance herself from him on the campaign trail and limited her exposure to the press. Trump decisively won the 2024 presidential election against Harris and propelled the GOP to a 53-47 Senate majority, sending Democrats to the political wilderness.

As Democrats attempt to rebuild their party, Original Sin has generated further criticism of Biden’s decision to run for reelection and questions about how his advisers and the media worked to cover up the extent of his condition.