Joe Biden became confused with dates, countries and the timeline of significant events, according to the transcript of an interview with the special council.
The US President appeared to mix up the years his son Beau died and when Donald Trump was elected.
Joe Biden became confused with dates, countries and the timeline of significant events, according to the transcript of an interview with the special council
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The transcript of the interview has now been unveiled and shows Biden repeatedly asking for help remembering certain dates — and his lawyers frequently stepping in.
Hur points to a photograph of one of Biden’s notebooks related to Afghanistan, when the president reads the date, 20 April 2009.
Biden asks: “When did I announce for President [in 2019]? If it was 2013 — when did I stop being vice president?
“In 2009, am I still vice president? Trump gets elected in November of 2017?” before someone noted it was November 2016.
Robert Hur – the justice department’s special counsel – was appointed to investigate whether Biden mishandled classified documents.
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Hur described the US president as a “sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory”.
While discussing his son Beau Biden, the President remembered the exact date of his death, but other people in the room reminded him of the year.
“What month did Beau die? Oh God, May 30,” he said.
“It was May of 2015,” another person, whose name is not identified in the transcript, said.
Biden replied: “It was 2015”.
Robert Hur described the US president as a “sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory”
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Yesterday, Hur faced questions in Congress over his final report.
Last month his report found Biden kept secret documents and stored them improperly but did not bring criminal charges.
Hur said: “My task was to determine whether the president retained or disclosed national defense information ‘willfully’. That means knowingly and with the intent to do something the law forbids.
“I could not make that determination without assessing the president’s state of mind.
“My assessment in the report about the relevance of the president’s memory was necessary and accurate and fair.”
Source Agencies
