An audio recording of former President Joe Biden’s 2023 interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur, released by Axios on Friday night, has confirmed long-held conservative concerns about Biden’s cognitive decline while in office. The five-hour-plus recording, obtained through an undisclosed source, reveals a president struggling with basic recollection, slurring words, and relying on aides to correct critical errors, raising fresh questions about his fitness to lead during his final year in office.

The interview, conducted over two days in October 2023 as part of Hur’s investigation into Biden’s mishandling of classified documents, paints a troubling picture. Biden, then 81, is heard pausing for long stretches, muttering, and faltering as he fails to recall key dates and events, including the death of his son Beau in 2015 and Donald Trump’s 2016 election. At one point, Biden asks, “Was it 2015 he had died?” before aides interject to clarify. When questioned about retaining classified documents after his vice presidency, Biden repeatedly says, “I don’t remember,” and appears confused about an Afghanistan memo found in his possession.

Conservative leaders and commentators have since pointed to the audio as evidence of a deliberate cover-up by the Biden administration and Democrats, who fought tooth and nail to block its release, citing executive privilege. “This is the cover-up of the century,” Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) declared, noting that Biden “had the nuclear codes” while exhibiting such lapses. Fox News contributor Jonathan Turley called the audio “shocking,” arguing it not only exposes Biden’s decline but also a “blatant double standard” in media and Justice Department treatment compared to Donald Trump, who faced charges for similar document mishandling.

The audio validates Hur’s report, which described Biden as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory”—a characterization Democrats, including then-Vice President Kamala Harris, dismissed as “gratuitous” and politically motivated. Yet, the recordings undermine those defenses, showing Biden joking about his age (“I’m a young man, so it’s not a problem”) while struggling to articulate coherent responses. Conservative commentator Guy Benson called the audio “painful,” noting that it makes Democratic defenses of Biden “look even worse.”

The timing of the release, days before the publication of Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson, has amplified conservative outrage. The audio proves Democrats – and their lapdog partners in the mainstream media – misled the public about Biden’s capacity to serve, potentially jeopardizing national security. “The White House knew how bad this was and hid it,” said Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), accusing Democrats of downplaying the tapes’ significance.

Critics also point to the Justice Department’s handling of the case as evidence of bias. While Hur declined to recommend charges against Biden, citing his memory issues, Trump faced 40 criminal counts for similar offenses. “If Biden wasn’t coherent enough to be prosecuted, how was he running the country?” asked conservative activist Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch, which filed FOIA lawsuits to secure the audio.

In 2024, Biden and his allies reacted furiously to Hur’s report, with the former president angrily denying memory issues and lashing out at questions about his son’s death, which he himself raised during the interview. The White House’s earlier release of a lightly redacted transcript failed to capture the full extent of Biden’s verbal stumbles, which the audio now lays bare.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)