WASHINGTON — The White House knew it was dealing with a political problem when a special counsel report last month cast doubt on President Joe Biden’s memory, but Biden also saw a much more personal affront.
Robert Hur, who was assigned to investigate whether Biden mishandled confidential documents, wrote that in an interview with prosecutors, the president could not remember the date his adult son, Beau, died of cancer. It was a shocking claim about a key event in Biden’s life, and it raised questions about whether the 81-year-old president is fit for another term.
“How on earth does he dare bring that up?” Biden said this angrily during a hastily organized press conference after the report was released. “Honestly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself it was none of their damn business.”
However, the reality of the situation is not as clear as Biden or Hur have portrayed, according to a transcript of the interview released Tuesday before the former special counsel testified on Capitol Hill.
Hur did not ask the president about his son’s death; Biden himself brought it up during a discussion about how he kept documents in a Virginia rental home after leaving the vice president’s office in 2017.
And Biden recalled the specific date Beau died, though he briefly wondered out loud about the year as the conversation shifted between different events.
“What month did Beau die?” Biden mused. ‘Oh God, May 30th.’
A White House lawyer intervened and said, “2015.”
“Was it in 2015 that he died?” Biden asked. When someone responded in the affirmative, the president added, “It was 2015.”
Biden aides defended the president’s inaccurate characterization of the interview during his news conference last month, describing his response as visceral and emotional. And they said his conversation with Hur showed how Biden found it important to reflect on how his son’s death had affected his decision-making in subsequent years.
The transcript released Tuesday sheds new light on one of the most politically and personally sensitive episodes of Biden’s term. Although the special counsel’s investigation found no basis to criminally charge Biden — unlike Donald Trump, who was indicted for refusing to return classified documents to the federal government — the references to his memory threatened the president’s fortunes to assure voters he can continue to do so. his job until he turns 86.
Beau was the attorney general of Delaware and widely seen as his father’s political heir when he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. The cancer, which Biden links to his son’s National Guard service near toxic burns on military bases in Iraq, was devastating for a family that had already experienced tragedy decades earlier. Shortly after Biden was elected to the Senate in 1972, his first wife and daughter were killed in a car accident that also seriously injured Beau and his younger brother Hunter.
Beau died while Biden was vice president, and his deep grief prevented him from running for president in 2016, when Trump ultimately defeated Hillary Clinton.
Biden mentioned the death during an interview Hur conducted on October 8. They discussed where Biden kept documents he was “actively working on” in his Virginia home.
The president responded by going back a few years to talk about how “my son in this time frame – is either deployed or dying.”
After the brief conversation about the specific date, Biden started talking about writing his book “Promise Me, Dad,” which was released in 2017.
“This is personal,” he said, sharing that “Beau looked like my right arm and Hunt looked like my left arm.”
Hur offered Biden a break at this point, but the president insisted on continuing with a long story about his family. Biden mentioned how after Beau was diagnosed with cancer, he made him promise not to leave public life.
Biden decided that “I couldn’t handle another run for president,” but that he would “stay involved.” However, in a story Biden has often told at fundraisers, he changed course after the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and Trump’s response that there were “very fine people on both sides.”
Biden said he is “the antithesis” of everything “this man stood for” and “I could beat him.”
As he wrapped up the story, Biden wondered aloud whether Hur needed such a lengthy response.
“Sorry for the details,” Biden said.
“No apology is needed,” Hur replied.
____ White House Correspondent Zeke Miller contributed to this report.