Didn’t we already know this? Almost exactly a month ago, special counsel Robert Hur released his report on the investigation into Joe Biden’s illegal retention of classified material in his home and office. Hur declined to charge Biden with a crime, explaining that a jury would be unlikely to convict an elderly man with memory loss so profound that he couldn’t even recall the year his eldest son died.
Biden and the White House accused Hur of using Beau Biden to set him up. The media accused Republicans of “salivating” and “pouncing,” and excoriated Hur for politiciizing the report. But not too long after that, leaks from those who saw the transcripts made it clear that Biden brought up Beau, not Hur. And Biden used him in the way Biden always uses Beau — as a shield, a point ABC News confirms this morning after reading the transcripts:
During a line of questioning about Biden’s activities after leaving the vice presidency in 2017, a period in which he was writing a book about the loss of his son, the president reminded investigators that Beau Biden’s death weighed heavily on his decision to run for president.
In other words, Biden brought up as an excuse for his actions, and as a way to get investigators to back off. As Biden later complained, the point was immaterial; Biden had classified material going back decades in his possession (illegally), much of it from his time in the Senate, long before either of his sons had any troubles. He kept it well after Beau’s death, and as Hur pointed out in the report, was well aware of it and showed some of the material to his biographer long afterward. Beau’s death was a bad attempt at playing the victim.
And then it backfired, as the transcript makes clear. Biden couldn’t clearly recall which year Beau died, even with help:
Recalling that period in his life, Biden, according to the transcript, appeared to get confused about when Beau died, getting the date correct, but not the year.
“And so I hadn’t, I hadn’t at this point … I hadn’t walked away from the idea that I may run for office again. But if I ran again, I’d be running for president,” he said, per the transcript. “And, and so what was happening though — what month did Beau die? Oh, God, May 30th–“
After two others present reminded him that Beau passed away in 2015, Biden said: “Was it 2015 he had died?”
The confusion on years is not insignificant, either. Beau died during Biden’s seventh year as vice-president. Barack Obama did a very good job of giving Biden plenty of space to mourn the loss and in publicly supporting his VP through the process. Within a few months, Biden would announce that he would not seek the presidential nomination, despite some expectations that he might jump in to challenge Hillary Clinton. It’s widely believed that Obama talked him out of it, with part of the reason being Beau’s still-recent death.
If Biden can’t connect those events in the rather dramatic context in which they took place — especially to his own time in office — then that is a rather dramatic memory failure. Combine that with Hur’s observations that Biden couldn’t accurately recall which years he served as VP, and it adds up to a cognitive decline that is more worrisome than Biden’s dodges on the issue of classified material.
So again, this isn’t exactly new. Why did ABC News treat it like a breaking story this morning? Because Hur will testify today on Capitol Hill to defend his report, that’s why. As John wrote yesterday, Hur will not just explain why he exposed Biden’s non compos mentis status but also will likely publicize the evidence of it — as well as the White House’s efforts to shut it down. ABC and other media outlets will want to get out ahead of that exposure, which will likely call into question their own lack of enthusiasm about digging into Biden’s mental status not just over the last month but over the last four years.
Still, it’s good to see ABC News “salivating” and “pouncing” today.
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