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the-pi-guy on 12 March 2024
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NYT - How the Special Counsel’s Portrayal of Biden’s Memory Compares With the Transcript

Mr. Biden appeared clearheaded most of the time.

Mr. Biden went into great detail about many matters, the transcript shows. He made jokes over the two days, teasing the prosecutors. And at certain points, he corrected his interrogators when they were the ones who misspoke.

When Mr. Hur showed him a photograph and suggested that two documents resembled each other, Mr. Biden objected to the comparison. When Mr. Krickbaum misquoted Mr. Biden as having told his ghostwriter that he had found material "marked" classified, Mr. Biden interrupted to question his inaccurate addition of that word.

Mr. Hur was selective in portraying Mr. Biden's memory of an ambassador's position.

In portraying the president's memory as unusually faulty, Mr. Hur singled out one other issue: whether Mr. Biden accurately remembered the stance of a diplomat in Afghanistan. According to the report, Mr. Biden, in discussing a memo he wrote to President Barack Obama in 2009 arguing against a surge of additional troops to Afghanistan, had mistakenly said he "had a real difference" of opinion with Karl Eikenberry, who was the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan. In fact, Mr. Hur noted, Mr. Eikenberry, like Mr. Biden, had opposed a surge.

Mr. Hur's most striking assertion about Mr. Biden's memory was that he "did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died." The death of his son from cancer, in May 2015, was one of the most emotional moments in Mr. Biden's personal life — and the subject of a memoir he wrote with a ghostwriter in 2017.


Mr. Biden expressed particular outrage about that line. "How in the hell dare he raise that?" the president said during a news conference held hours after Mr. Hur's report became public. "Frankly, when I was asked the question I thought to myself, it wasn't any of their damn business."

The transcript shows that Mr. Hur did not specifically ask when Beau Biden had died. Instead, Mr. Hur pressed Mr. Biden about where he kept papers related to work he did after leaving the vice presidency in January 2017, like teaching at a think tank in Washington, a cancer "moonshot" project and the book he wrote about Beau's death