President Joe Biden delivered a long and rambling response when pressed by Department of Justice special counsel Robert Hur regarding document retention during the final days of the Obama government. The 81-year-old Biden, ignoring Hur’s question, went on a nearly 10-minute rant discussing country clubs, interview practices of almost 60 years ago, and how a man he knew lost his genitals in a fire.
Hur asked Biden: “So now let’s talk about the Naval Observatory. So you’ve been living there for eight years. So at the end of your vice presidency, what kinds of papers or documents or files were at the Naval Observatory as you were preparing to leave and move out?”
The President began to respond substantively but quickly spiraled into a bizarre and unhinged tangent comparable to the iconic Simpsons scene where Homer Simpson’s father indulges himself in a winding story that ends up nowhere.
Read it for yourself:
PRESIDENT BIDEN: Well, if you’re talking about anything that was a substantive matter, classified or otherwise — you know, the fight in the Judiciary Committee over whether or not — I was the guy who wrote the Violence Against Women Act. It was — really meant a lot to me. And so they might find stuff on the Violence Against Women Act in one section of a drawer or in the shelves of the library or of the Naval Observatory.
Or issues, you know, relating to — I know it’s gonna sound strange to you guys, but agriculture is a $4 billion industry, agriculture is a $4 billion industry in Delaware and the Delmarva peninsula, and so — or, you know, I’d have a lot of political things that — I, I don’t know where they were, but I know I had material that — where I, you know — like, there’s a whole, whole bunch of stuff around about how -~ what made me run for President in the first place, and about how things were — you know, I mean, for example, I, I was a — I got a job with a — I didn’t take law school very seriously, but I won the International Tort Competition. I was in — matter of fact, the first time in tort class, we had a really difficult professor. I mean, very well-known, Professor at Syracuse, and he called on me to — you know how they do in law school, discuss a case, you know, in your first torts class. And I had never read the case, and I stood up and I spoke for 10 minutes. The whole class stood up, started clapping.
The transcript notes there was laughter among those in the interview at this point.
PRESIDENT BIDEN: And he said, Mr. Biden, you’ll be a hell of a trial lawyer. He said, not a single thing you — had to do with that.
Again, the transcript denotes laughter.
PRESIDENT BIDEN: And — but at any rate, so — but in law school, I got in law school, and I got, believe it or not, a job offer from some prestigious law firms. I was not sure where I wanted to go, out west and where — I wanted to move to Idaho, I thought, and so I was going to go out and interview with Boise Cascade. That’s all I’d really — and — but I took a job with the best-known trial firm in Delaware in mostly civil defense issues. And, and so — and I remember a guy named [REDACTED] (phonetic), a brilliant guy that went to Amherst and Harvard and said — when he was interviewing me said, in those days, you had to — today you would be killed. You had to put your photograph in the upper right-hand corner when you’re applying for a job. And he looked at me and said, I assume you’re expecting to be hired on your looks.
Once again, the transcript denotes laughter.
PRESIDENT BIDEN: And I said — and I thought the job was over, and I said, I said, well, it would improve the look of your firm.
Those present respond with laughter again, according to the transcript.
PRESIDENT BIDEN: I mean, I was just — So anyway, to make a long story short, they ended up offering me a job. And in Delaware, it has -~- used to have the lowest pass rate in the country because we’re not big on encouraging lawyers to come and play in Delaware. It’s a very tight bar. And, and so what happened was you take the bar, you graduate, and you have to clerk for somebody for six months. (Indiscernible 0:11:51.6). And they don’t give the bar exam until the middle of September. You don’t get your results to your — for the bar exam until January. And, and so — I — but I got hired in the meantime by this firm appropriately named Prickett, Ward, Burt Sanders. And, and to make a long story not quite so long, I was sitting second chair with the, with the, with the guy who ran the firm, Prickett, Mr. Prickett, and there was a young man who we were representing, [REDACTED] (phonetic) getting — and (indiscernible 0:12:34.3) construction company, you know, I had to turn those — we have more oil refineries than any place other than in Houston in Delaware and Pennsylvania, (indiscernible 0:12:43.6) up in that area.
And this poor kid is down a hundred-foot vessel, chimney, scraping the hydrogen bubbles off of the inside. They were made to shut the plant down once every — whatever, about eight months or six months or a year, whatever it is. And he was wearing the wrong pants, wrong jeans, and he -~- a spark caught fire and got caught in the containment vessel and he lost part of his penis and one of his testicles and he was 23 years old.
And I sat through the -~ his presentation with the, with the senior, and we had in Delaware, which is – the Dupont family had no influence of course – contributory negligence. If you were slightly contributory negligence, you were out.
And so the senior partner turned to me and said, write a memo for tomorrow, we’re going to make a motion to dismiss after presenting this case. So I did. I wrote this memo. And son of a bitch, it prevailed. And I looked over at that kid and his wife home with two little kids, and I thought son of a bitch, I’m in the wrong business, I’m not made for this.
It is at this point that Biden transitions to discussing the admission practices of private country clubs in Delaware, before explaining his decision to become a public defender.
PRESIDENT BIDEN: And I — there was a famous club called the Wilmington Club — no blacks, Catholics are allowed — have been allowed to be members. The DuPont family name. And we went to a place called the Wilmington Club, and he thought he was doing — he said, take the lunch at Wilmington. I said — the only time I ever lied that I can remember looking somebody in the eye, and I mean sincerely, I said, oh, my dad’s coming in today, I was going to see -~ okay. He didn’t give a damn where I went. I walked across and walked through to the second — the basement on a public building and walked in with a guy named Frank and I said I want a job as a public defender. He said, don’t you work for Prickett. He said, he said, are you okay, like what the hell’s the matter with you. I quit and became a public defender.
The process of that was that’s what got me — I had been involved in the civil rights movement. That got me deeply involved in trying to reform the Democratic Party, which was a southern Democratic Party. We were a slave state by law. We were one of the border states so we couldn’t figure — anyway, but the Democratic Party was a conservative party in Delaware. The DuPont family ran the Republican Party, but they were like Rockefeller Republicans at the time. And so I got involved with a group of people trying to reform the Democratic Party.
At this point Biden informed Hur his story was meant to illustrate the amount of materials he has kept over the years.
PRESIDENT BIDEN: And the whole point of telling you all this is I had a lot of material that I kept notes on and, and when that — where as I was taking on the Democratic Party. And they came to me and asked me to — this group, this new Democratic coalition — I had, in the meantime, it’s two years down the road, I was 26 years old, 27. And I went to work part time for a criminal defense firm mainly, a real estate — there were five people. And so I was no longer a public defender because I couldn’t be a public defender and work for that firm.
President Biden’s moment of clarity does not last however, and he again plunges into a lengthy rant — several times to “make a long story short.”
PRESIDENT BIDEN: And one thing led to another and I joined this group to try to reform the party. And they came to me about and I was making the case we’ve just got to get more candidates to run, to — we’re not, we’re not represented. And the southern part of the state of Delaware will talk at you like this, for real, you go down — you think I’m joking, I’m not joking. “Damn, boy, I don’t agree with a damn thing you say,” but he said, “I know where you stand, know where you stand.” That’s how they talk. And it was solidly democrat, southern democrat. We were the only state in the nation occupied by the military for 10 months with drawn bayonets at every corner when Dr. King was assassinated, and that’s really what got me going. Long story, and I’ll end, because it relates to maybe some of the other things you may ask about, is that I had a lot of material that I did recent. When you’re the youngest guy in the room, you get to turn the lights on and off. And so I, I amassed a lot of material making the case why the party had to change and, and they — and it ended up that about 10 months in, the group from the area where I lived came to me and said they wanted me to run for the state senate. I said, no, no, no, I can’t do that. I just — I’m thinking of starting my own law firm and it’s going to — no, I can’t do that. And because they meet in Dover and dah, dah, dah.
And then next thing that happened was I came back about three weeks later. They said we want — to the office I was in at the time. I had now started my own office. And I didn’t realize no one my age ever started his own law firm. I hired two lawyers. I had no freaking money. But I hired them and paid them more than I was going to make, and I started this firm. And there — I remember standing looking out over the public and they said how about running for the county council. I said, no, no, I can’t go down. He said, they meet right across the street there only twice a week at night. You can do this. So to make a long story short, I ended up doing it. But I wanted to be sure that I was going to lose because — so I ran ina district that no one’s ever won, a Democrat had never won.
And I won it.
And next thing you know, I’m in a tough position.
My generic point was there was a lot of material that I had amassed that I wanted to save. I probably still have it somewhere. And so that stuff would travel wherever the hell
I was —
Hur, at this point, finally interrupts Biden. The special counsel steered the conversation back to the relevant question of document retention.
“Do you recall having these types of things with you at the Naval Observatory and this was part of the stuff you were trying to move out?” Hur asked the President.
“No. I had most of it at my house in that office,” Biden finally answered.
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