President Joe Biden told jokes and unfurled lengthy detailed stories from his decadeslong political career as he parried questions from special counsel Robert Hur and his investigators over two days last October, a transcript of the interview reviewed by CNN shows.
The Justice Department has sent the transcript to Congress, which had subpoenaed the records. The deposition is replete with classic Biden yarns, from an embarrassing archery episode in Mongolia to tense discussions over his views on the Afghanistan war.
The president also displayed episodes of foggy memory, including one highlighted in Hur’s final report, in which the president appeared not to remember the year that his son Beau died.
Biden repeatedly said he didn’t know or couldn’t remember how his aides stored or handled sensitive documents, or how they ended up in boxes that were moved to a private office and homes he occupied after leaving the vice presidency.
Asked to explain how he kept track of his personal notes on foreign policy, the president told the investigators: “I have no idea, I wish I could say I was more organized.”
Taken together, the instances seemingly led the special counsel to describe the president in his final report as presenting like a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” one who would likely win over a jury.
In the 388-page report released last month, Hur concluded that Biden mishandled and improperly disclosed classified information after leaving the vice-presidency. But Hur said that he didn’t believe there was enough evidence to charge Biden with a crime.
Despite the charging declination, Hur’s report reverberated through the political landscape for his painting of the president as doddering and confused. The White House and Biden himself expressed outrage at the characterization, as Republicans seized on it while also bemoaning that charges weren’t brought.
Biden’s repeated and often off-topic soliloquys during the interview with Hur’s team are notable given the high stakes of Hur’s investigation of the sitting president. Lawyers normally advise clients to give short answers in depositions, but Biden appears to lean into a strategy from his days in the Senate – filibustering with long answers during the five-hour allotted interview time, which was negotiated in advance between Hur and Biden’s personal and White House lawyers.
The tone of the interview doesn’t appear adversarial, according to transcript. The discussion is punctuated by laughter as Biden made jokes.
The president joked that “the FBI knows my house better than I do,” told prosecutors he could tell a picture was old because “I have my arm around (South Carolina Republican Sen.) Lindsey Graham,” and referred to the pope as “my ticket.” He also teased that amid the FBI’s multiple searches of his homes and office, “I just hope you didn’t find any risqué pictures of my wife in a bathing suit.”
Biden emphasized that he never intentionally kept classified documents after leaving office. He described relying on aides to handle sensitive papers, including deciding what to pack up when he was leaving office.
According to the transcript, Biden asks aloud when he was vice president, as he tried to recall timelines. But the most explosive allegation about Biden’s memory in the report was that the president “did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died.”
The transcript shows that the president brought up his son amid a broader discussion about his handling of sensitive documents as he mulled his future after leaving public office after five decades. Asked where he kept papers that he was working on, Biden began a story framing the context as the 2017-2018 era. The president brought up his son Beau, who he said had encouraged him to remain politically engaged.
“Remember, in this time frame, my son is either deployed or is dying,” Biden said, according to the transcript. The president brought up his son’s death and he remembered the month and day: “What month did Beau die? Oh God, May 30th.” Several people in the room interjected to remind him that his son died in 2015.
The muddle of years in the answer appears to cover the years Biden was dealing with his son’s death from cancer, while also deciding his political future. He didn’t run for president at the end of the Obama administration, ceding to Hillary Clinton. Then the Trump years prompted him to run, he said.
As evidence that Biden knew he had classified information in his garage, Hur cited transcripts of a recorded conversation between Biden and his ghostwriter where Biden said that he “just found all the classified stuff downstairs.” Hur said that Biden appeared to be referencing documents about the Afghanistan troop surge that FBI agents later found in his garage.
Biden spun the comment differently during his interview, however. When an investigator asked the president if he remembered “finding any classified stuff downstairs,” the president said no.
“The only thing I can remember is I wanted to be clear to him that I didn’t want what he just heard me say … I didn’t want any of that mentioned, it was confidential,” Biden said of discussing the contents of his book.
The president continued, “I did not – not confidential in the classification sense, but don’t, don’t write about that. That’s off the record. That’s not something I want to be talking about in the book about Beau.”
In the interview, according to the transcript, Biden shed little light about how classified documents came to be found at his post-vice-presidential office and homes in Delaware and Virginia, repeatedly saying he didn’t recall who packed and moved boxes from his official vice-presidential offices and residence at the end of the Obama administration.
As the special counsel repeatedly asked Biden how a box with classified documents landed in his home, he pointedly asked the president: “Do you remember how these materials got into this box and then how that box got into the garage?”
“No, I don’t remember how it got – I don’t remember how a beat-up box got into the garage,” Biden said.
Biden also said he didn’t remember key episodes that Hur learned from other witness interviews, such as how his longtime counselor Steve Ricchetti packed boxes into his minivan to remove them from the US Naval Observatory, the official vice president’s residence.
The transcript shows investigators at times seeming to struggle to keep control, as Biden used up time with long answers. Asked about his use of work spaces at the Naval Observatory residence, Biden proceeded to take about 10 minutes to tell stories that ranged from his work to passing the Violence Against Women Act to an account of his first job out of law school at a Delaware law firm.
In one instance, Hur, running out of the allotted time for the interview, tried to steer the president to recall whether he knew certain sensitive documents were being stored in his main Delaware home.
Instead of answering the question, Biden launched into a story about his Corvette, which was stored in the garage where some documents were found. The president then segued into the joys of electric car technology, and how fast they can go from zero to 60 mph.
Hur interrupted politely, “Sir, I’d love – I would love, love to hear much more about this, but I do have a few more questions to get through.”
