Joe Biden said he could not remember the answers to critical questions over 150 times during his interviews with Special Counsel Robert Hur and his team, according to transcripts.
Throughout two interviews lasting over five hours, Biden said “I can’t remember,” “I don’t remember,” “I don’t recall,” “I don’t know,” and similar permutations dozens of times — at a rate of roughly once every two minutes.
Discussing a memo about Afghanistan, for example, investigators quizzed the Democrat on remarks he made to ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer that he had “just found all the classified stuff downstairs” while he was a private citizen.
“And so you can imagine we are curious what you meant when you said, ‘I just found all the classified stuff downstairs,’” they pressed.
“I don’t remember… So – okay, well, I don’t remember and it may have been – I just don’t remember,” Biden said.
Discussing the removal of boxes from the Naval Observatory, he said: “I don’t ever remember – I’m sure there were… boxes we threw clothing in, threw pictures in, threw – you know. But I don’t ever remember packing up written material to go anywhere. It doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, but I just don’t remember any of that.”
Such episodes persuaded Hur to write in his report that Biden had “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen,” but recommended against charges because he came across as an “elderly man with a poor memory.”
Biden reacted furiously to the report, denying a specific allegation he could not remember when his son Beau died, as Hur noted, but instead regarded the matter as none of the special counsel’s “damn business.”
The transcripts suggest his memory failed him in this area too, however, as he was the one who brought up his son’s passing in the first place.
