The Justice Department is disputing the notion that the audio from President Joe Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur is the subject of significant public interest.
In a court filing Monday, the Justice Department argued against expediting the release of audio recordings of Hur’s interview with Biden. Hur conducted a two-day long interview with the president last October for his investigation into whether Biden mishandled classified documents.
“The motion to expedite should also be denied because it is based on an inaccurate premise: that expedition is warranted because of the public’s interest in President Biden’s conduct during a law enforcement interview,” the Justice Department said in response to the Heritage Foundation’s push to disclose the Hur audio before the presidential election.
“But the public interest in information related to Mr. Hur’s investigation has already been served by the government’s release of the Hur Report and a transcript of President Biden’s interview, as well as by Mr. Hur’s hours-long testimony before Congress.”
The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, several mainstream media outlets, and others are involved in Freedom of Information Act litigation against the Justice Department over the Hur tapes. During the litigation, the Justice Department has used artificial-intelligence fears and President Biden’s invocation of executive privilege to push back against requests to turn over the audio.
“The Biden-Harris Justice Department’s saying that the American people have no public interest in whether the President is senile and whether his Administration, including Vice President Harris, covered it up is offensive,” said Oversight Project chief counsel Kyle Brosnan.
Hur’s investigation concluded in February with a bombshell report that described Biden’s apparent mental decline and memory lapses, including an instance where he forgot the year his son Beau passed away. At the time, Hur’s report brought a great deal of controversy and Democrats rallied to the 81-year-old president’s defense, accusing Hur of being a partisan Republican intent on harming Biden’s election prospects.
In March, Hur testified before congress and defended the necessity of his observations about Biden’s age in order to conclude that he should not pursue criminal charges against Biden. On the day he testified, interview transcripts were released and they confirmed Hur’s description of Biden’s mental lapses.
Before Hur released his report, the White House pushed him to edit the document and soften up its language about Biden’s compromised state of mind. Liberal critics of Attorney General Merrick Garland argued he should have intervened to edit the report, a notion Garland readily dismissed after facing blowback over Hur’s investigation.
President Biden invoked executive privilege in May to block the Hur tapes from being released in response to a subpoena from House Republicans. The House GOP later held Garland in contempt for refusing to release the Biden-Hur tapes. But the Justice Department declined to prosecute Garland on contempt charges.
Eventually, Biden’s age doomed his political career after his disastrous debate performance in June made it an undeniable political liability for Democrats. Biden stepped aside from the presidential race in July due to an open revolt from Democrats and increasingly poor polling against former president Donald Trump.
With Biden in the race, opinion polls found that Americans consistently rated Biden’s age as a top issue and many believed he was too old to be president. Biden is the oldest president in American history and flubbed his words countless times throughout his term. Democrats were largely in denial about Biden’s mental struggles until the CNN debate took place.