President Biden confused key dates during his October interview with special counsel Robert Hur, forgetting which year his son Beau died of brain cancer, as well as the year Donald Trump was elected president, a transcript of the sitdown shows.
During a discussion of why he kept sensitive papers after leaving the vice presidency in 2017, the 81-year-old president launched into a rambling explanation before asking: “What month did Beau die? Oh, God, May 30 —“
At that point, White House lawyer Rachel Cotton and an unidentified man reminded Biden that his son died in 2015.
Remember, in this timeframe, my son is — either been deployed or is dying, and, and so it was — and by the way, there were still a lot of people at the time when I got out of the Senate that were encouraging me to run in this period, except the President,” BIden said, referring to President Barack Obama.
“I’m not — and not a mean thing to say. He just thought that she [Hillary Clinton] had a better shot of winning the presidency than I did.”
The sequence contradicted Biden’s angry claim that Hur had inappropriately raised his son’s death during the interview.
“There’s even some reference that I don’t remember when my son died,” the president said Feb. 8. “How the hell dare he raise that? Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself it wasn’t any of their damned business.”
In fact, the transcript shows Biden brought up Beau’s death unprompted by the special counsel.
