“For posterity’s sake.” Those words from President Joe Biden sum up the crushing impact of the leaked audiotapes from the interview between then-President Joe Biden and Special Counsel Robert Hur. Not only did they remove any serious doubt over Biden committing the federal crimes charged against President Donald Trump, but they also constituted what is akin to a political racketeering indictment against much of the Washington establishment.
The interview from Oct. 8-9, 2023, has long been sought by Congress, but was kept under wraps by the government even as Biden campaigned for a second term.
Many of us balked at Hur’s conclusion that no charges were appropriate despite the fact that the President removed classified material for decades, stored it in grossly negligent ways, and moved it 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 memory for 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, President Biden gave an irate press conference in 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 how Biden forgot 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.
Nevertheless, media outlets like the Atlantic followed the lead of the White House in attacking Hur for “misleading” the public on Biden’s memory.
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 questions over the assurances of White House press secretary Jen Psaki (who left her post in May 2022) and Karine Jean-Pierre who portrayed Biden as 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 mocked 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.’ 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 physical and mental diminishment. 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 F— 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 to the debate itself. On CNN, 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 there was no longer any advantage or ability 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 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 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. If 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.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
This column ran in Fox com
It’s no a revelation of Biden himself, but more so of His Administration in his absence of mind.
In that WHO? was running the Government and WHAT was really done (What did they really do?),
IMO: A lot of Deep State Dirty deeds were done, along with some good one. Bu as it hangs in the balance the Deep State won.
It got its Wars and Money (Lots of Money). Hence the extortion of the Taxpayers went under the radar. They (the Media & Admin) made it all look Homey (warm & fuzzy) while Joe was kept in the White House Basement. …
The Perpetrators are in the comfiest nest “For Posterity’s Sake”. HRC, Obama, and the cast of DOJ, FBI, DHS, Media … the Military Defense Base etc. have all been well rewarded.
What they did to US and the Trump family is criminal … with no Perpetrators to be charged. The Band of Thieves that stole ‘Our-Integrity’.
The Biden administration substantiated that Obama’s vision to fundamentally transform our constitutional republic is possible during the next Democrat in the White House. Plain and simple.
That’s right. Never underestimate Obama’s hand in any of this. He plainly admitted it: in effect, saying, he’d love to have a third term, and speak in someones ear, call the shots, while staying behind the scenes, out of sight. Obama never left. He began rogue use EO’s and defiance of the Constitution in earnest, setting the stage for the unorthodox nature pf politics we experience today. Obama substantiated the Biden administration.
Although I, as is fellow physician GEB, was suspicious of signs and symptoms of Biden’s cognitive decline during the 2020 presidential campaign, I think the president’s thought processes and decisions surrounding his withdrawal from Afghanistan should be reviewed. As I recall, President Biden was counseled by Secretary of Defense Austin, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, NSA officials, some members of his Cabinet, that his desire to suddenly completely withdraw our military from Afghanistan was imprudent, ill-advised, and would possibly result in catastrophe. I remember the reporting at that time detailed that Biden was adamant that he would not reverse his decision to withdraw despite repeated cogent arguments predicting a military and political failure. Anyone who has experienced a family member or patient in the early stages of cognitive decline can confirm how difficult it is to reason with such an individual even after presenting facts that more likely than not predict an outcome different than the individual anticipates. Even if those advising the president did not recognize a possible cognitive issue during the 2020 campaign, the Afghanistan decision should have raised serious questions about the president’s cognition. While in medicine we realize that many times “the family is often last to recognize” a close relative’s cognitive decline, the President’s cabinet, his advisors and attorneys, the defense Secretary and NSA officials, and the attorney general were likely negligent in not recognizing that, at the least, there could be a problem with the President thinking and reasoning skills. The person likely most guilty of negligence was, and is, the President’s physician. He was likely either guilty of negligence for missing the President’s cognitive failings (nonfeasance) or guilty of recognizing the President’s likely cognitive disability and not raising the question of invoking the 25th Amendment to the Cabinet. A legal question here is, does the president’s medical team have a legal duty to both the president and to the American citizens to raise the question presidential cognitive incompetence if it is reasonably suspected?
Vincente – the problem is they moved to SLOW, not too fast.
The original departure dates was April 2021. At that time the Taliban only controlled bout 30% of Afghanistan and was nowhere near Bagrahm or Kabul.
The departure was going to be an embarrassing mess no matter what.
But there is a big difference in a somewhat orderly departure when the bad guys are coming but months away, and when they have surrounded you.
“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.”
When did Tapper begin writing this book? I’m always amazed at how fast such books are published.
There is something missing in this Age of Rage. A justice system that metes out different treatment by party alignment is clearly wrong. We The People as individual humans very well know we all make mistakes. What’s missing in governance is the willingness to concede error and ask us for forgiveness as the error is corrected. We call it humility. Might it up our trust?
We’re hardly talking about a justice system anymore. In the age of rage, we have judicial activism/dictum in alignment with a one-party ideology, and this one-party mindset, which tolerates no other orientation of thought, no other rights of existence, is not prone to humility or any sharing of political ground. While the extreme-left is bankrolled just as amply as any “oligarch” they accuse for the other side, they more-accurately meet all criteria as the genuine fascists (advocating authoritarian hierarchical government). But once again, we who are rational, in favor of principled dialogue, allow or neglect answer to this MIS-labeling.
Now, we can finally say it out loud: This very well could be the scandal of the century. From the cover up, who was actually running the country, who knew what and when. The effort by the Democrat party to cover Biden’s mental decline. The effort of MSM to NOT report or address and even actively cover up Biden’s mental decline. If he was so mentally declined, are any of his EOs even legal? What about all those pardons? If he was so mentally impaired, who authorized the use of the autopen? These are answers we the American people deserve.
Upstate, you hit all the points and issues that need to be investigated and shown to the public.
I got something you could take to the bank. Snivelin little Jake Tapper was scared as hell of Joe Biden and his gang so he applied the boot polish every chance he got. They spit the tabacky on his hat as he bent to polish their boots and the polishin rage snapped like a fire cracker. Surely Jake deserves a turn of good luck from his book sales and all of his leftist friends want to ride his coat tails in the reprieve of the we were lied to parade. As for me. I ain’t buyin it.
When Morning Joe said “best Biden ever” this may have been true. The prior more functional Biden was more capable of corruption
So true
Excellent point
Of course Jake Tapper had to come out with a book that tells us how he was lied to and that it was he who was just a victim of those lies. Imagine being a reporter of the news and being so naive. Oh the camera don’t lie Joe just had a bad day and then another bad day and then another bad day…. Tapper is only defending his own mental cognition having spent many a night telling us that Biden was sharp as a tack. Tapper was a full throated conspirator in the cover up and now he comes up with a blame everyone but himself book. It is amazing that there are still people who watch his nightly program and still nod yep yep yep yep yep…. Thankfully there ain’t quite as many as there was a while ago.
There are st least two things here that indicate a serious problem:
1. Beau Biden. After ascertaining that he was being asked about 2017/2018, Biden said that Beau was either deployed or died then. Beau was last deployed in 2009. He died in the spring of 2015.
2. Trump’s election. He thought he was elected in 2017. When told it was 2016 he then appeared confused because he didn’t leave office until 2017. He took some time to understand that though elected in 2016 Trump was inaugurated in January 2017.
The rambling incoherence more generally is also a problem, but these two were quite striking.
The cabinet failed to take him out and install Harris. Why? Arrest the cabinet including Harris. It was admitted by someone that a team was running the country implying Joe isn’t. Grill them until the team is on display. The heads of agencies were part of RICO. Harris was installed as candidate knowing she had no chance of winning. Why? They had no candidate so went for grabbing the last nickel in campaign funds? Audit it. Citizens have been murdered and robbed until all stores are closing. Fauci and mayorkas are part of RICO. How difficult is this when an ordinary citizen sees and understands.
RICO has been named! A glorious day it is.
For Professor Jonathan Turley Esq. to just now notice… is now undeniable that the White House staff actively hid the …………………. from the American public. That includes the White House press secretary…… The media simply refused to seriously pursue the story until the cover-up no longer mattered after the debate.… Once the public found out, the media was ready to tell the story when there was no longer any advance or ability to deny it. Articles began to appear with the same realization of “Oh you meant THAT. This exact pattern goes back at least to FDR. As documented in the book WITNESS exposed the Communist employed the United States involved in writing the charter for the United Nations. It took more than 20 years for the Democratic Party and the media to admit he was a Communist working against America’s interests. This pattern has repeatedly been used. Deny Deny Deny until years later say oh ya you were right. We made a mistake you can’t possibly believe we deliberately lied. It boggles my mind that it took this long for you to notice. It makes me wonder who has dementia.
Read Sam Tanenhaus’ book on Whitaker Chambers and you will see that you are right on point about Witness. The left lionized Alger Hiss, a now proven spy as well as Julius Rosenberg, another proven spy. Now they have infiltrated the colleges, the high schools and even the elementary schools, not to mention J Schools, Law Schools and Med Schools. The bug is eating the host and the host is on it’s last legs. I have a few issues with Trump but he is the only remedy strong enough to do the job. Think of the harshness of cancer drugs that are needed to cure the disease.
The leftists, Dems and their media lapdogs, used the virus from a COMMUNIST country to take out Trump the last time and now they are using the courts to undo the election.
We really are on the precipice and we better wake up.
We do now know beyond a doubt that Julius Rosenberg was a spy.
We also KNOW that he was an inconsequential spy and did NOT provide the USSR anything of value – certainly not the atomic bomb secrets.
Further we KNOW the government knew this at the time.
Perhaps you have not been reading Professor Turley’s commentaries over the past several months. He has been commenting on the obvious cognitive decline of former President Biden for some time. The point of today’s column is that now that the audio tapes of the Hur interview have been released, there’s no place to hide for the folks who actively participated in a wide scale cover-up.
Every EO the autopen signed during #46 should be voided.
One word (BINGO)
That point needs to be addressed. It needs to be repeated again and again.
The REAL “conspiracy theory,” was that Biden was COGENT, CO-GENT—and why do we allow that label “conspiracy theory” to be used only on one side of the political spectrum? We must hang that sign consistently and strategically on democrats who more frequently engage in this kind of thinking. Only then will “conspiracy theory” lose its dis-informing force and perhaps lead to fair and correct debate, such as once prevailed in free society.
….Acceptance of Biden’s obvious cognitive decline, touted as mere “” or harmless “senior moments” covered-up the incontrovertible evidence of a real “deep-state” and its handlers in full control.
Even worse, a democrat-constituency so emotionally and irrationally ill as to swallow any and all inconsistencies, no matter how illogical. And these unstable ideologues want a one-party state. Fight, fight, fight is not just a slogan….
An excellent article by the Professor. And yes it was Racketeering in the worst sense of the world.
There was no doubt in 2020 that Biden was impaired. I saw it and so did many others. Kevin T. Kitty above actually describes the onset of dementia quite well. It is a problem that has small discrepancies at first and interspersed with periods of normal functioning. But it is unpredictable. And it only gets worse. It does not get better.
In addition to that you had decades of film and video of Biden talking and conducting hearings, committee meetings and interviews. If people only put those up on the screen and compared them it was obvious. I suspect it was done by the media and either ignored or hidden away just like the mental status exams that we never saw or were never done. The best way to miss a diagnosis is to not look for it especially if you think it will be inconvenient, embarrassing or politically unpalatable.
This was a criminal hoax perpetrated on the American people. That is a fact. The real question is who was in charge, who controlled the signatures, and are there charges that can be pursued.
Coverups of presidential infirmities are not new. Just review Who ran the presidency after Woodrow Wilson’s stroke and after FDR’s cardiac event in late 1943 (either a heart attack or sudden onset of severe congestive heart failure). FDR literally lost large amounts of weight and shriveled before the camera before he died in 1945. These events were managed by staff, wives, and supporting politicians. Sound familiar?
These events were managed by staff, wives, and Stalin.
GEB, an excellent commentary on the exceptional column delivered by Professor Turley today. I wish that I could be hopeful that there will be any meaningful consequences for this concerted effort to deceive and defraud the American citizenry.
I would like to be able to say that the coverup of Joe Biden’s cognitive incapacity is the most significant coup by the swamp that has ever taken place in the US, but that would probably be wrong. It’s becoming increasingly clear that the Kennedy assassination tops it. However much of a rogue Trump is, he is really no threat to the Republic. If we even had a Republic anything like what it professes to be. Which we don’t. And haven’t had for decades.
The Biden Coup d’etat: And that coup included the most dastardly political affront of them all, the attempt to install an Air-Head-Poser female in his place with out any due-process. The fact that they could pull such a fast switchover in plain sight, with celebrity pomp, silly woman-politics, race fakery, staged/edited interviews, and popular acceptance was an embarrassing travesty for this country. The extreme-left electorate is truly lost and dumbed-down.
Apparently Prof Turley has rendered Dmac speechless? No that is an impossibility to do so. Great article posting Prof Turley
Another day that ends in Y that acknowledges another “alleged” conspiracy theory was actually true all along. At this point, Democrats and their propaganda arm have fully established themselves as the equivalent of a drug-addled homeless encampment.
So… everything he “signed” post this i terview should be questioned in court? And every single thing signed with the autopen is invalid? Who was signing the garbage that made it to Mr. Compost Mentis’ desk?
OldFish,
We have asked in the past, who was really running the country? It is obvious it was not Joe Biden. We all knew that, but MSM and Democrats keep saying, “He is sharp as a tack!” “He is laser focused!” “He is running circles around the staff!”
Same guy who calls it a day before 4pm and spent more time on vacation than any other president in modern history.
Occasionally, something comes along that shocks the conscience so much it must be fully investigated so that we can prevent it from ever occurring again. A pandemic, for example, which threatens lives and safety requires immediate a full examination for this purpose. Our legal system generally but not always ensures that unlawful disruptions are appropriately exposed and punished.
Here we have something that also requires our full attention and investigation. As Turley states, there are no laws, per se, to address the Biden coverup. Laws tend to deal more with commissions than omissions, yet the latter in some cases may be more pernicious than the former. That would be so in this instance.
House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) has announced he will continue to investigate the coverup of Biden’s mental decline and the use of the autopen to run the country. He promises to call aides and assistants of the former president to ask hard questions about what they knew and when did they know it.
No one should be off the hook here, including Jill Biden and surely Hunter Biden who spent a lot of time in the White House. Without the likelihood of criminal charges, the Fifth Amendment shield will be off the table. If not, Congress can request immunity from the Department of Justice that, presumably, would accommodate such a request immediately.
We, the people, need to know what they, the other people, did, and why.
JJC,
Great comment. The fun part is going to be watching how they will cry there is nothing to see here, while the investigation goes on, people who did know testify on the record what they knew and when.
Well said professor. Yet another so called right wing conspiracy theory that turns out to be true. And MSM just cannot imagine why so many people are switching them off for independent media. MSM has no credibility. They lie. We know they lie. They know we know they are lying. But they expect us to be dupes and believe their lies. Then they get all up set when we dont. So we mock them. We laugh at them. We point out how they lied or were wrong. Then they ignore they ever lied or were wrong like a six year old who got caught in their own lie. Guess what MSM, at least half of the country sees through you, knows you to be the liars you are and we are switching you off.
How marvelous!
When conspiracy “theories’ turn out to be fact , they are no longer conspiracies. And with the feral Dimunists and their beloved Biden crime syndicate, there are more and more facts being amassed and less and less conspiracies.
Now, watching Democrats try to distance themselves from the now exposed reality they tried to gaslight America of Biden’s mental decline.