If President Biden believes that his mental faculties were unfairly maligned by special counsel Robert Hur, there’s an easy way to clear up the record: He could call on the Justice Department to release the transcript of his five-hour interview. House Republicans are already seeking it, along with any recordings, and Mr. Biden’s acquiescence might speed things along.
Mr. Hur says in his report that Mr. Biden portrayed himself “during his interview with our office” as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” Twice Mr. Biden is quoted as failing to recall which years he was America’s VP. “If it was 2013—when did I stop being Vice President?” And: “In 2009, am I still Vice President?” Mr. Hur also writes that Mr. Biden “did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died.”
The President angrily denied all this last week. “There’s even a reference that I don’t remember when my son died,” he said. “How in the hell dare he raise that. Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself it wasn’t any of their damn business.” Mr. Biden’s lawyers, who reviewed a draft of Mr. Hur’s report before its public release, made an even more vigorous defense in a letter that the special counsel appended to his final document.
“Far from being ‘hazy,’” it argues, “the President proceeded to provide often detailed recollections across a wide range of questions, from staff management of paper flow in the West Wing to the events surrounding the creation of the 2009 memorandum on the Afghanistan surge.” Mr. Biden’s attorneys then assert: “The President’s inability to recall dates or details of events that happened years ago is neither surprising nor unusual.”
These stories sound mutually exclusive, and reading the transcript could prove one of them right. If the White House is confident in its version of events, it should want the transcript to come out.
Read the Full Op-Ed over at The Wall Street Journal:
If President Biden believes that his mental faculties were unfairly maligned by special counsel Robert Hur, there’s an easy way to clear up the record: He could call on the Justice Department to release the transcript of his five-hour interview. https://t.co/Zf8ETTiUOD
— Wall Street Journal Opinion (@WSJopinion) February 14, 2024
Thank you for visiting