President Joe Biden appears to have lied to the American people when he rebuked special counsel Robert Hur for asking about his son's death, according to the transcript of the Biden interviews released Tuesday.
The transcript exposes the fact Hur never asked Biden about the timing of his son's death, contradicting the president's indignant public objections to that supposed line of questioning.
The transcript was released just before Hur's House Judiciary public testimony Tuesday.
BREAKING: Shed 42 lbs In 30 Days With This Simple Night-time Pill
Former President Donald Trump noted the Beau controversy is covering for what remains a significant "Biden documents hoax" in that the sitting president was found to have retained classified documents from when he was a senator and a vice president.
"Big day in Congress for the Biden Documents Hoax," Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. "He had many times more documents, including classified documents, than I, or any other president, had. He had them all over the place, with zero supervision or security."
Trump himself continues to maintain protection of prosecution for willful retention of classified documents comes from the President Records Act precedent.
"He does not come under the Presidential Records Act, I do," Trump continued. "He had many docs in Chinatown, and they were moved all over the place, and heavily used.
"My boxes were moved by GSA, were secure, most carried clothing, shoes, sporting equipment, kitchen 'stuff,' newspapers, pictures, magazines, awards, etc. The DOJ gave Biden, and virtually every other person and president, a free pass.
"Me, I'm still fighting!!! MAGA."
Hur himself said in his opening statement he was planning not to charge Biden and needed to provide a reason, saying that is the reason he called out Biden's inability to remember basic facts.
"The need to show my work was especially strong here," Hur wrote in his opening statement. "The attorney general had appointed me to investigate the actions of the attorney general's boss, the sitting president of the United States. I knew that for my decision to be credible, I could not simply announce that I recommended no criminal charges and leave it at that. I needed to explain why."
Hur cautioned he would not discuss investigative steps or veer from the contents of the report. He said "the evidence and the president himself put his memory squarely at issue."
In the report, Hur said that it could be difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt Biden intended to keep the documents, which is the standard for conviction in a criminal case. In part, he argued, jurors could be swayed that Biden's age made him seem forgetful, and there was the possibility for "innocent explanations" for the mishandling of any records.
"Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory," Hur wrote in his report.
Hur defending his reasoning for making that the scape goat for his decision to not recommend prosecution.
"What I wrote is what I believe the evidence shows, and what I expect jurors would perceive and believe," Hur added in his opening statement. "I did not sanitize my explanation. Nor did I disparage the president unfairly."
While Biden fumbled some details in his interview, the full transcript could raise questions about Hur's depiction of the 81-year-old president as having "significant limitations" on his memory.
Both the hearing and the transcript were meant to clear up lingering questions about Hur's report on the discovery of some classified records at Biden's home and former Washington private office. But there was no guarantee they would alter preconceived notions about the president or the Trump appointee who investigated him, particularly in a hard-fought election year.
The Associated Press reviewed a transcript of the Biden interviews, which were being turned over to Congress by the Justice Department on Tuesday just hours before Hur's House Judiciary Committee testimony.
Hur appeared set to be the rare witness likely to be vilified all around — by Republicans angry over his decision not to charge the president, and by Democrats for his unflattering commentary about Biden.
Republicans were likely to dig further into Hur's assessment of the president's age and memory — a major attack line as they seek to unseat Biden come November. Democrats will try to paint Hur, whom Trump appointed a U.S. attorney, as a political partisan out to help his party win a presidential election.
Hur's report cited evidence Biden willfully held on to highly classified information and shared it with a ghostwriter, based on audio of the conversations between the two men in which Biden said he had just come across some classified documents at his home.
In the interviews, Biden said he did not recall the exchange, or that he had actually discovered any documents. He said if he had discussed anything questionable with the ghostwriter, it was in referring to a 20-page sensitive memo he had written to then-President Barack Obama in 2009 arguing against surging troops in Afghanistan that he wanted to ensure didn't make it into publication.
Hur devoted much of his report to explaining why he did not believe the evidence against Biden met the standard for criminal charges, partly based on the hours of interviews with the president.
In his interviews, Biden repeatedly told prosecutors he did not know how classified documents ended up at his home and former Penn Biden Center office in Washington.
"I have no idea," he said.
Biden first sat down with Hur during a time of crisis, one day after the devastating Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7.
He entered the first day of the interview having just gotten off the phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, part of a series of calls meant to prevent the attack from spiraling into a wider regional confrontation. At multiple points, when Hur suggested a pause, Biden encouraged prosecutors to keep going, saying, "I'll go all night if we get this done."
Biden said that he left it to his staff to safeguard classified information that was presented to him, often leaving papers on his desk in heaps for aides to sort through and secure.
"I never asked anybody," Biden said. He noted that much of his staff had worked with him for years, to the point where they didn't need direction from him. "It just – it just got done. I don't know. I can't remember who."
Confusion over the timing of the death of Biden's adult son Beau — who died May 30, 2015 — was highlighted by Hur in his report as an example of the president's memory lapses. But the transcript showed Hur never asked Biden about his son specifically, as a visibly angry Biden had suggested in comments to reporters the day the report was released.
"How in the hell dare he raise that," Biden said of Hur. "Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself it wasn't any of their damn business."
TRENDING: Viagra Obsolete: New Invention Cheaper, Safer, Faster
Hur asked Biden about where he kept the things that he was "actively working on" while he was living in a rental home in Virginia immediately after leaving the vice presidency in January 2017. And in that context, it was Biden himself who brought up Beau's illness and death as he talked about a book he had published later in 2017 about that painful time.
"What month did Beau die?" Biden mused, adding, "Oh God, May 30th."
A White House lawyer then chimed in with the year, 2015.
"Was it 2015 he died?" Biden asked again.
Biden went on to recount in detail the story contained in his book, "Promise Me, Dad," of how his late son had encouraged him to remain engaged in public life after the Obama administration ended.
The Department of Justice redacted information about other people involved in the case, and the National Security Council and the State Department blacked out some details relating to sensitive intelligence and foreign affairs matters. Before the redactions, the transcript had been classified as top secret and barred from dissemination to foreign nationals.
;void(0);){kind=link}