CHR - THE BIDEN AUDIO TAPES

TOP LINE

New reporting this week suggests the Trump administration is considering releasing the audio from former President Joe Biden’s interview with the Special Counsel investigating his mishandling of classified government information.

Nearly two years after the recording was made by Special Counsel Robert Hur, releasing the audio would not compromise law enforcement methods nor likely jeopardize future sensitive investigations of people close to the White House.

While the risk of AI (Artificial Intelligence) manipulation of a President’s voice must be weighed, the election has long passed, and the argument for a full, public release is strong.  

As reporters promote their books about the alleged cover-up, and the former president pushes back, releasing the Biden audio would likely reveal uncomfortable truths about his cognitive decline. 

It would also expose how his aides deceived the public about Biden’s fitness for office, the impact on national security as well as the apparent complicity of some White House journalists who turned a blind eye to Biden’s deterioration.

DEEP DIVE

President Joe Biden was interviewed by Special Counsel Hur over two days, October 8 and October 9, 2023. Hur’s mandate was to investigate Biden’s mishandling of classified information. Records were found stuffed in drawers,  in the back of Biden’s Delaware garage and amongst his personal notes. Biden kept notes during classified briefings.  He took these notes when he left the White House in 2017, to write a memoir called, Promise Me Dad.

When I covered the release of Special Counsel Hur’s report for CBS News in February 2024, a Justice Department reporter shared that White House aides were vigorously objecting to his editors about their headline that Hur characterized Biden as an “elderly man with a poor memory.”   

For that reason, among others, Hur recommended in his report against prosecution because he concluded it would be hard to convince a jury that Biden’s mishandling of classified records was willful.  I reassured the Justice Department reporter that we had used the same headline at CBS News, as they did, for our network Special Report coverage .  While the reporter did not explicitly state the White House was threatening their editors, it was clearly an ugly situation.

When the Biden interview transcript was released in March 2024, it showed some strong exchanges, as well as significant stumbles and gaps in Biden’s memory.  The transcript undercut his administration’s talking point that Biden was “as sharp as ever.”

The transcript made clear Biden had to be prompted by aides about the year his son, Beau Biden, died of brain cancer.  It was Biden who first raised the topic of his son’s death, not the Special Counsel who was wrongly criticized, at the time, for an insensitive line of questioning. 

Hearing the pauses, the confused responses as well as the intervention of his aides, would add more texture to the interview. It would also give the American public more evidence to weigh about Biden’s fitness for office and whether it jeopardized national security.

The timing matters…

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