Though new audio recordings released by Axios paint a picture of an elderly man suffering memory loss, rare exchanges showed glimpses into former President Joe Biden’s earlier days, and shed light on what could have led to Hur’s ‘sympathetic’ characterization and findings related to the investigation.

Biden reminisced during his interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur about a 2011 visit to Mangolia where he claimed to have ’embarrassed the hell out of the leader of Mongolia.’

‘I went to Mongolia and, and great pictures,’ Biden said. ‘They were showing — they were doing a what they would do at the time of the invasion of the Mongols into Europe in the 14 — in the 800s. And they — and then show what a normal day was, or how they, how they bivouac.’

He described being ‘out in the middle of nowhere’ and looking up on a hill, seeing a tiny line of a 20-mile horse race between kids under the age of 16 on bareback.

‘And you know, there are sumo wrestlers doin’ everything they do,’ Biden said lightheartedly.

He said the leaders walked over to a target with bales of hay a hundred yards away, where locals were practicing their aim.

‘I think — I don’t know if it was to embarrass me or to make a point, but I get handed the bow and arrow,’ Biden said. ‘I’m not a bad archer. But (indiscernible) where I can pull it back, so I — and pure luck, I hit the goddamn target.’

The people in the interview room burst into laughter, to which Biden assured them, ‘No, I really did.’

He went on to describe the scene — ’20 bales of hay with a big target in the middle of the bale of hay.’

‘And so I didn’t mean anything by it, I turned to the prime minister and handed it to him and the poor son-of-a-bitch couldn’t pull it back,’ Biden said.

The room roared with laughter once again.

‘I was like, ‘oh, God,’’ Biden said through the cackling.

Hur ultimately decided the former president should not be charged criminally for having classified Obama-era documents after leaving office, describing him as a ‘sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.’

Leaked audio shared by Axios from President Joe Biden’s 2023 interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur has re-ignited serious questions about his mental sharpness, especially as he struggled to remember when his own son died and when Donald Trump was elected president.

In one moment, Biden tries to recall the death of his son, Beau: ‘My son. Is either been deployed or is dying. And so… What was happening though?’

‘What’s much about dying? May 30, 2015, he died,’ said Biden. ‘May 2015. I think it’s 2015. I’m not sure the months are, but I think that was it.’

Beau Biden passed away from brain cancer on May 30, 2015, at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. He was 46.

In the audio, Biden also mixes up the year of Trump’s 2016 victory: ‘Trump gets elected in November of 2017. 2016. 2016. So… That’s when we left office, January of 2017. But that’s when Trump gets sworn in manually.’

The fumbling recollections are part of a six-hour interview that Hur used to support his conclusion that Biden’s memory was ‘significantly limited.’

The White House kept the audio under wraps at the time as critical moments in Biden’s own life and in recent American history appeared to be completely out of reach for the former president.

The conversation, part of a two-day interview in October 2023, led Hur to describe Biden as a ‘well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.’

On Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle Friday night, host Laura Ingraham put it bluntly: ‘This is the biggest scandal that I remember in recent political history: that this man was allowed to continue as the commander in chief of the world’s greatest superpower.’

As Ingraham said later in the segment, ‘We still don’t really know who was making the tough calls. It obviously wasn’t the man we heard on that tape.’

Former President Joe Biden joked that he was a ‘young man’ during an October 2023 interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur over his mishandling of classified documents, newly released audio shows.

Axios released audio on Friday from Biden’s interviews with Hur in which the then-president appeared to struggle to remember when his son Beau died, when he left office as vice president, what year President Donald Trump was elected to his first term or why he had classified documents that should not have been in his possession.

In addition to Biden’s memory lapses, the recordings showed him slurring his words and muttering when speaking to Hur.

Transcripts of the interviews — conducted on Oct. 8 and 9, 2023 — were released on March 12, 2024.

On the first day of the interview, Hur stressed the importance of answering truthfully and urged Biden to make his best effort to recall the events in question, which the prosecutor acknowledged happened years ago.

‘I’m a young man, so it’s not a problem,’ Biden, now 82, jokingly responded.

‘Okay, great. Glad to hear it,’ Hur replied. 

Hur, who was appointed by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate Biden’s handling of classified documents, said in his report, released on Feb. 5, 2024, that he declined to bring charges against the president, in part, because a jury would find him a ‘sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.’ The report acknowledged that the documents were ‘willfully’ obtained by Biden during his time as vice president and as a senator.

‘I’m well-meaning and I’m an elderly man and I know what the hell I’m doing. I’ve been president, and I put this country back on its feet. I don’t need his recommendation,’ Biden said when questioned by Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy days after Hur released his report. 

The special counsel’s report, in addition to Biden’s gaffe-prone public appearances, amplified pressure from Republicans who said he lacked the mental fitness needed to serve as president.

Democrats and Biden’s White House initially criticized Hur for his report, insisting the then-president was ‘sharp’ and that the special counsel was politically motivated.

Later in 2024, during Biden’s re-election campaign, Democrats urged him to drop out of the race over his performance in the June presidential debate against Trump, citing his age and mental acuity. Biden formally dropped out of the presidential race in July and finished his term. His vice president, Kamala Harris, was defeated by Trump in November’s general election.

‘For posterity’s sake.’

Those words from President Joe Biden sum up the crushing impact of the leaked audiotapes from the interview between him and Special Counsel Robert Hur. Not only did they remove any doubt over Biden committing federal crimes, but they also constituted what is akin to a political racketeering indictment against much of the Washington establishment, from the White House staff to Democratic politicians to the media.

The interview, conducted from Oct. 8-9, 2023, has long been sought by Congress, but was kept under wraps by Biden’s Justice Department even as Biden campaigned for a second term.

Many of us balked at the conclusion of Hur that no charges were appropriate despite the fact that the president had removed classified documents for decades, stored them in grossly negligent ways, and moved them around to unsecure locations, including his garage in Delaware.

Given President Donald Trump’s indictment for the same offenses, it was hard to imagine how the special counsel could not recommend the same criminal charges (presumably after he left office).

Instead, Hur declared it would have been hard to get a jury to convict Biden because he was ‘a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.’

It appears that Trump, on the other hand, was presumptively not sympathetic or well-meaning and possessed a good enough memory to face prosecution.

The contrast was glaring and only reinforced the view of many citizens that there are two tracks for justice in Washington.

Soon after the report’s release, Biden gave an irate press conference at which he lied about the findings of his culpability and lashed out at any suggestion that he had gapped or stumbled in the interview.

For example, when reporters raised Hur’s assertion that Biden had forgotten when his son Beau died, Biden angrily responded, ‘How in the hell dare he raise that?’ Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself it wasn’t any of their damn business.’

However, it was not Hur but Biden himself who raised the death of his son, and he forgot a wide array of dates, including when he served in office.

The interview shows that in 2023 it was clear that Biden was mentally diminished despite claims from many allies and former aides that there was a sudden loss of capacity just before the disastrous debate in 2024. It is now undeniable that the White House staff actively hid the president’s incompetence from the American public. That includes the White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki (who left her post in May 2022) and her successor, Karine Jean-Pierre, who insisted that Biden was sharp and ‘running circles’ around the staff.

Of course, the media is now covering the story after the public saw the truth in the debate. Figures like CNN’s Jake Tapper have even written books that belatedly pursue the question despite previously insisting that there was no evidence of a diminishment in Biden’s mental state.

Tapper repeatedly dismissed the claim and even excoriated Lara Trump for raising it. In one interview, he pushed a White House talking point that such suggestions were mocking Biden for a childhood stutter.

‘It’s so amazing to me- a ‘cognitive decline,’’ he told the president’s daughter-in-law. ‘I think you were mocking his stutter. Yeah. I think you were mocking his stutter and I think you have absolutely no standing to diagnose somebody’s cognitive decline. I would think somebody in the Trump family would be more sensitive to people who do not have medical licenses diagnosing politicians from afar.’

When Lara Trump insisted that this was clearly evidence of a ‘very concerning’ cognitive decline, Tapper dismissed her statement by saying, ‘Thank you, Lara. I’m sure it’s from a place of concern. We all believe that.’

Keep in mind that others beyond Lara Trump were raising this issue and there were tapes showing obvious physical and mental decline. The media simply refused to seriously pursue the story until the cover-up no longer mattered after the debate.

Over on MSNBC, Joe Scarborough was equally apoplectic at those raising the issue and stated

‘Start your tape right now because I’m about to tell you the truth. And eff you if you can’t handle the truth. This version of Biden intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever. Not a close second. And I have known him for years…If it weren’t the truth, I wouldn’t say it

This media effort continued all the way up the debate itself. On CNN.com, Oliver Darcy wrote ‘Right-wing media figures are desperately pushing conspiracy theories about Biden ahead of the debate.’

Once the public found out, the media was ready to tell the story when it became impossible, and no longer politically beneficial, to deny it. Articles began to appear with the same realization of, ‘Oh you meant THAT mental decline. Well sure.’

It was the same belated acknowledgment that came, after the election, with Hunter Biden’s laptop. The media just moved on with a shrug and a collective ‘our bad’ concession.

As for the then-president himself, the one moment of clarity in the interview may have been his most incriminating line. When asked why he removed classified material on Afghanistan, Biden admitted ‘I guess I wanted to hang on to it for posterity’s sake.’

That is precisely what critics on CNN and MSNBC accused Trump of doing: removing material as types of keepsakes or trophies.

One president was indicted for that and one was sent along his way to pursue a second term in office.

The real indictment that comes out of these tapes is a type of political racketeering enterprise by the Washington establishment. It took a total team effort from Democratic politicians to the White House staff to the media to hide the fact that the president of the United States was mentally diminished. It there were a political RICO crime, half of Washington would be frog marched to the nearest federal courthouse.

Of course, none of this complicity in the cover-up is an actual crime. It is part of the Washington racket.

After all, this is Washington where such duplicity results not in plea deals but book deals.