"The Only Time I Ever Lied" -- Joe Biden's Interview with the Special Counsel Is Worse Than You've Heard (Part 2)

"The thing I valued most my whole life, my reputation and integrity." (Joe Biden testimony to Special Counsel)

Last week, I published Part 1 of “Biden‘s Interview With Special Counsel Hur Is Worse Than You’ve Heard.” That installment focused on Biden’s history of prevarications and his latest cock-and-bull-story about how he dazzled his law professor and fellow students with his brilliance. It shows that his false embellishments have been a pattern for Biden throughout his political career.

This Part 2 will describe three other aspects of Biden’s testimony, that deserve attention because they are relevant to his suitability for the office he hopes to hold for another four years. Most have not been discussed much previously. 

The three areas are: (1) falsehoods and conflicts in his testimony, (2) memory failures indicating a lack of mental acuity, which supports Special Counsel Hur’s conclusion that, “It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him - by then a former president well into his eighties - of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness,” and (3) rambling, unfocused responses that demonstrate Biden’s inability to think clearly. Some of his answers fall into at least two of these categories.

Because of the number of such instances and the length of his oft-rambling responses, this article will not attempt to catalogue all the examples of each category; several examples of each should suffice.

Biden’s interview with the Special Counsel lasted five hours over two days.  The transcript for Day 1 is here, and Day 2 is here. In the discussion below I will indicate the relevant pages for readers who want to read his testimony in the transcripts.

MORE FALSEHOODS AND CONFLICTS IN BIDEN’S OWN TESTIMONY

With just a touch of irony, let us start with this: Biden’s claim about the only time he ever lied. Who knew there was only one? On the first day of his testimony Hur asked Biden what kind of files and documents he kept at his residence in the Naval Observatory while he was Vice President (at pp. 54 -55). Biden launched into a disjointed ramble covering a variety of other topics that I describe below. 

During his off-topic ramble, Biden described how when he was a new associate attorney, a senior partner invited him to lunch at a whites-only private club. Biden says that he evaded that invitation by falsely claiming that he was going to see his father who was visiting from out of town. He testified (at p. 59) that this excuse for missing lunch at a racist club was the “only time I ever lied that I can remember.”

It would add too much to the length of this article to catalog all the lies Joe Biden has told.  For brevity, just consider the lies he has admitted about his college and law school education during the 1988 Presidential campaign. As I pointed out in Part 1, “His prevarications are so numerous that even CNN referred to his ‘habit of inaccurate ad-libbing about his biography.’”

And his lies that he never discussed business with Hunter and that his family never received any money from Chinese interests? Remember what Biden claimed in one of the 2020 debates with Trump? “My son has not made money . . .  in terms of this thing about . . . what are you talking about? China! I have not had . . . The only guy who made money from China is this guy [President Trump].” He’s the only one. Nobody else has made money from China.” Even Hunter denied that. Biden was lying to the entire country to get elected.

One more example of Biden’s lies and contradictions in his testimony will suffice. The Day 2 transcript shows Biden was asked if he ever kept “documents with any classification markings on them at all” after he left the Vice Presidency in 2017, until he became President in 2021 (p. 5.) Biden first responded by testifying that he “never kept anything when I wasn't Vice President or President that, in fact, was classified document to be used by me for any reason.” (p. 6). After sometimes equivocating a bit by claiming that he did not “recall” keeping any classified documents, Biden then repeated his original flat-out denial: “I did not keep anything that was marked -- that was clearly marked having been handed to me when I was Vice President.” (p. 10)

That was not true.

That this denial was another lie became clear when Biden was questioned about a lengthy memo that he had prepared in 2009 giving President Obama his recommendations for their Afghanistan strategy. Biden had kept this memo in the library at his lake house. Biden admitted that he saved the memo because “I wanted just to hang onto it for posterity’s sake.” Note how that contradicts his “not for any reason” testimony just minutes before.

In February 2017, shortly after leaving the Vice Presidency, Biden was meeting with the ghost writer for his book. The ghost writer’s recording of the meeting shows that Biden told him that he still had possession of classified documents: “I just found all the classified stuff downstairs.” (Day 2, p. 32). Complying with coaching by his counsel, Biden claimed that he did not remember what he meant by that simple sentence and said that he did not want to “speculate.”

In short, Biden’s testimony was false: Contrary to his earlier denials, the transcript shows that Biden retained classified documents after he was no longer legally permitted to do, that he did it for a specific reason – for “posterity’s sake” while he was working on his book – and that he told others that he still had “all the classified stuff” downstairs.’

Falso in uno, falsus in omnibus. Nothing – nothing – that this man says can be accepted as true. Not his academic history, not his business dealings with his son, not the situation in Afghanistan, not who is responsible for a dissolved southern border, and not even statements about the death of his son. Add your own for a more complete list.

MORE MEMORY FAILURES

One of Biden’s notable and seemingly incomprehensible memory failures occurred in connection with the questioning about his 2009 Afghanistan strategy memo to President Obama. During the course of that testimony Biden asked, “[I]n 2009, am I still Vice President?” The transcript indicates that someone apparently whispered the answer to him. Day 2 at p. 45. When you read that, consider that Biden wrote that memo to Obama shortly before Thanksgiving in 2009 (pp. 52-53), after having been sworn as Vice President the previous January.  But Biden is now asking if he was “still Vice President” at a time when he had only been in office for ten months??!!

The best example of Biden’s abnormal memory failures, however, was his inability to remember the date his son Beau died. Although that was the subject of considerable news and commentary when the Hur Report was released, the transcript sheds additional light on the episode that further erodes the credibility of Biden and his enablers.

Here is the complete exchange from Day 1 (at pp. 82-83):

MR. HUR: So during this time when you were living at Chain Bridge Road and there were documents relating to the Penn Biden Center, or the Biden Institute, or the Cancer Moonshot, or your book, where did you keep papers that related to those things that you were actively working on?

PRESIDENT BIDEN: Well, um... I, I, I, I, I don't know. This is, what, 2017, 2018, that area?

MR. HUR: Yes, sir.

PRESIDENT BIDEN: 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. I'm not -- and not a mean thing to say. He just thought that she had a better shot of winning the presidency than I did. And so I hadn't, I hadn’t, at this point -- even though I'm at Penn, I hadn't walked away from the idea that I may run for office again. But if I ran again, I'd be running for President. And, and so what was happening, though - what month did Beau die? Oh, God, May 30th —

MS. COTTON: 2015.  

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: 2015.

PRESIDENT BIDEN: Was it 2015 he had died?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: It was May of 2015.

PRESIDENT BIDEN: It was 2015.

When Hur confirmed that he was asking about documents in 2017 – 2018, Biden first said that Beau had “either been deployed or is dying.”  Think about it – if Beau had deployed in 2017, his death obviously would have been after then (unless you buy Biden’s previous false suggestions that Beau died while deployed to Iraq). But, in fact, Beau had died two years earlier. Biden was then corrected by Ms. Cotton from the Office of White House Counsel, who told him that Beau died in 2015. When Biden questioned that, another unidentified man confirmed that she was correct.

Now recall that when Hur’s Report was first released, there was a firestorm of protest from Biden and his allies over Hur’s comments about Biden’s memory failure on this point. So, Biden made an appearance …. and lied about it.

Faking outrage over Special Counsel Hur supposedly daring to question him about his son’s death, Biden said through gritted teeth, “How in the hell dare he say that? Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself, ‘It wasn’t any of their damn business.’ …. I don’t need anyone … I don’t need anyone to remind me of when he passed away.” But, of course, the transcript shows that he needed two people “to remind me of when he passed away.”

Of course, like his claims of scholastic honors and excellence, it was all a lie. The transcript above shows that Hur never asked the question.  It also shows that Biden specifically asked the group to remind him of when Beau passed away and he only accepted 2015 as the correct date after two people confirmed it.

The transcripts also include other instances where Biden could not remember something common or routine and had to be helped out with coaching by his counsel. For example, he thought that Trump was elected in 2017. Two unidentified men corrected him by pointing out that the presidential election was in 2016, not 2017. Biden then asked, “So why do I have 2017 here?” His White House Counsel informed him “That’s when you left Office, January 2017.” Biden: “Yeah, okay.” Day 1 at p. 83.

A RAMBLING MAN         

The ability to focus on what’s important to plan complex operations or policies is an essential attribute for the chief executive of any large or complex organization. In meetings, for example, a competent CEO, or other presiding officer will insist upon crisp, focused presentations, and upon keeping all questions and discussions concentrated on the specific matters at hand. Such operations simply do not permit the wasted time that would occur if executives floundered around spinning from one irrelevant topic to another. No board would tolerate it.  Complex businesses and organizations cannot be run that way. 

Numerous aspects of Biden’s testimony demonstrate his total lack of focus. When asked the simplest of questions, to which a yes, no, or short concise answer would be preferable, he rambled on and on, giving every appearance of not remembering what he had been asked.

Biden provided a good example of his inability to focus in his response to the narrow question asking what kind of files and documents he kept at his residence in the Naval Observatory. Biden first said that there were probably some speeches, press, clippings, and photographs, but that he did not know what else he kept there. He then launched into an 11-minute soliloquy which, in addition to his claim about the only lie he ever told, he wandered about from topic to topic about how he sponsored the Violence Against Women Act, that agriculture was a $4 billion industry in Delaware, his brilliant performance on his first day of law school (discussed in Part 1 of this series), his post–law school job search, his employment by a Delaware firm, a lawsuit that he defended leading to an unfair result, his disillusion with his firm and practice, becoming a public defender, being solicited by the Democrat party, trying to reform the Party, and being the only 26-year-old ever to start his own law firm. 

There are numerous other examples throughout his testimony, but it is not necessary to not add further to the length of this article by listing more.

Over the years, I have deposed and cross-examined literally hundreds of witnesses. I have seen many, like Biden, who would quickly forget the question they were supposed to be answering and would instead stray off into an irrelevant narrative that might go on for pages if not checked. If I had to rate them to crown a champion for the title of “least focused and able to concentrate on the matter at hand,” in reading the two days of Biden’s testimony, I have to say that he would at least make the final four. He likely ranks as number two out of 1500 or so. But none of the other candidates for the title were in a position that came close to requiring the discipline and focus of the Presidency.

Should this man be President?