Episode 4493: Biden's Admission Could Lead To Criminal Charges; Spending Spirals Out Of Control
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
162.67082
Summary
Former Vice President Joe Biden tells the story of how he stumbled across a handwritten memo written for President Obama in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and how he kept it with him for years, even after he left office in 2017.
Transcript
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This time we were living in Chambers Road and there were documents related to the Penn-Biden Center or the Biden Center or the cancer from your shot or your book.
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Where did you keep papers that related to those things that you were actively working on?
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Remember, in this time frame, my son has either been deployed or is dying.
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And so it was – and by the way, there were still a lot of people.
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It was a lot of time when I got out of the Senate that were encouraging me to run in this period, except the president.
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And I'm not – it's not a mean thing to say, I mean, he just thought that she had a better shot of winning the presidency than I did.
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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 might run for office again.
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But if I ran again, I'd be running for president.
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And so what was happening, though, one month of Bo died, oh God, May 30th – 2015.
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I'm not sure the month of – I think that was –
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And what's happened in the meantime is that as – and Trump gets elected in November of 2017?
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That's when you left office in January of 2017.
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And in 2017, Bo had passed and – this is personal.
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Was this memo, Mr. President, was this something that you consciously kept after your term as
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Is this something that you wanted to hold on to?
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Did I have this – was this in my possession, this memo?
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Yes, and to give you some context for this, Mr. President, it was found in the front of
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this notebook that's on the first page, and the notebook was found in the library at the
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I don't recall how it got back – I mean, I don't recall how it got back in the book because
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I don't think it was – maybe it's a copy made it, but I don't think so.
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I wasn't sure how I got – whether I gave it to the president.
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It was faxed to the president, which I had to copy.
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And I just put it in the book, and that was it.
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Were you aware that you had kept it after your term as vice president?
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I don't know that I knew, but it wouldn't have – it wouldn't sound something I would
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The reason I ask is it's been written about – Bob Woodward wrote about it in one of his
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Jules Winkover wrote about it in his biography of you.
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So that's the reason I asked, is if it was something that you wanted to hang on to because
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it was going to be the subject of reporting or –
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I don't know if it was going to be the subject of reporting, but I wanted to hang – I guess
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I wanted to hang on to it just for posterity's sake.
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In the course of explaining that memo about Afghanistan, you said to Mark, I just found all the classified
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And so you can imagine, we are curious, what you meant when you said, I just found all the
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Okay, well, I don't remember, and it may have been – I just don't remember.
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Do you remember telling Mark about the handwritten memo that you had written for President Obama?
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I don't remember specifically, but my guess is I may have done that.
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Do you remember telling him, I just found all the marked classified stuff downstairs?
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Do you remember actually finding any classified stuff downstairs?
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We appreciate very much your willingness, and we hope that you will be able to – that you
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will put forth your best efforts in really trying to get your best recollection in response
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to the questions we ask, because I acknowledge that some of the questions we are asking related
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Pray for our enemies, because we're going medieval on these people.
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I got a free shot at all these networks lying about the people.
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I know you try to do everything in the world to stop that, but you're not going to stop it.
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And where do people like that go to share the big line?
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I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience.
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Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose?
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If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved.
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Blockbuster tape put out last night, first in about a four, four and a half minute clip,
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and then later in the evening put out exclusively at Axios.
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Mark, first off, how many years have you been a reporter, sir?
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I guess I'm old as the hills since 1996, and you do the math.
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So you've been doing this a couple of three years, right?
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Is this one of the biggest blockbuster stories you've ever handled?
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Because, dude, this is so much bigger than Watergate.
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I'm actually gobsmacked on your first clip, and then when I heard the whole thing.
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Is this the biggest scandal you've ever handled in your life?
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I don't know about the biggest scandal, but it's a huge news story because it speaks to
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all of these different themes and elements that had been discussed in the 2020 campaign,
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2024, and then after, which was in 2016, even, to a degree, which is Joe Biden decided
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to run, and there were persistent questions about his age, and his administration and his
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campaign did a very effective job putting up enough guardrails around him, bubble wrapping
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him, and also relying in some cases on very skillfully placed stories, for instance, that
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he had a stutter, to explain how he had lost some of his edge, to put it general.
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And now, after the Biden White House had refused to release these tapes, the Biden Department
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of Justice had refused to release these tapes of him sitting down with this special prosecutor,
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It adds a real dimension to that discussion that happened that day that we just didn't
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And some of it is just the normal stuff of asking anybody, hey, what happened a few years
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ago, like, I couldn't remember how long I've been a reporter.
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But when you listen to some sections of it, it's just very, very surprising at how Joe
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Biden was unable to answer certain just basic questions or recall certain basic dates, namely
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the death of his son, the year Donald Trump was elected, when he left as vice president.
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And you can just hear in his voice that it's just not the same guy who was a vice president
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or even to a degree who had first run for president in 2020.
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By that point in 2023, when he had sat down with the special prosecutors, it was pretty
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clear that, as the prosecutor had said, he was an old man.
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And the prosecutor said he was a simple, he would be seen by jurors as a sympathetic old
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And that's part of the reason, with a bad memory, essentially, that he wouldn't be prosecuted.
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And Democrats at the time just attacked the special prosecutor criminals, you know, attack
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Now we hear for the first time that Robert Harper accurately described what he heard, because
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By the way, this interview with her took, correct me if I'm wrong, 8 October of 2023.
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So it's just really a year after he gets into the hustings with Trump, trying to take on
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What stunned me is that Robert Herr, if you just step back for a second, Robert Herr sounds
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like a resident or an intern or a young doctor at a facility for older folks really guiding
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I mean, this is not what you consider a prosecutorial deposition.
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And I'm not saying he's being unprofessional, but he's being quite gentle on what obviously
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Well, there's two prosecutors who appear in this tape, or who you can hear.
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The one initially who is asking him just sort of the basic foundation questions of the documentation,
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which prompted Biden's response about Beau and all of those memory lapses.
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And the second prosecutor is a guy named Mark Crickbaum.
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And yes, both of them were very friendly, very gentle.
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Even Crickbaum, he's the guy who sort of catches Biden, so to speak, in these two sort of inconsistencies.
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Biden at one point says, like, I don't know why I kept it all this stuff.
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And then Crickbaum's like, well, you know, you talked about this with Bob Woodward and
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Do you think you might have kept it for posterity's sake?
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And the reason Crickbaum is asking that is to lay the foundation for the fact that Biden
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knew he had classified documents and decided to keep them.
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And that was an intent crime, so to speak, or it could be an intent crime.
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And then you hear Biden's lawyer, Bob Bauer, kind of quickly jump in at a certain point.
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And like, hey, look, the president has answered what he's answered.
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Later on, Crickbaum, in a very, again, gentle fashion, points out, hey, we have these tapes
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of you talking to your ghostwriter for your book, Promise Me Dad.
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And in that recording made by your ghostwriter review, you said, I found all the classified
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It's just audio, essentially turns to his lawyer.
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He audially turns to his lawyer and says, well, you know, I'm kind of not, he doesn't quite
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But he gives a very lawyerly response, and his lawyer backs him up.
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But in both of those cases, Robert Herr, who is just trying to establish this basic foundation
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How do the file cabinets and desks wind up in your various offices and homes?
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And how do these classified documents wind up in those pieces of furniture?
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In both cases, however, these guys are very friendly.
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They understand they're interviewing the president.
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The president's lawyer, Bob Bauer, calls the special prosecutor, Rob, or Robert, doesn't
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call him Mr. Herr, and he calls Mark Kreckbaum, the other prosecutor, Mark.
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So it's very familiar and very friendly, to be honest.
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That's one of the things that makes it surprising to see Democrats afterwards say that they're
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Mark Caputo, a reporter from 1996, at least 1996.
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A blockbuster news story that is the dominant news story this morning throughout the world.
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Her interview with Joe Biden from 8 October of 2023.
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We're also going to go to the Vatican with Ben Harnwell shortly.
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00:16:19.020
Okay, we're with Mark Caputo of Axios, the Jim Vanderhay, Mike Allen site
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that is kind of the conventional, the Washington Consensus news site here
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that kind of drives the conversation, the narrative every day.
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Caputo, you are one of the most respected guys in town,
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being as close to even-handed as the mainstream media can get.
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But I think people are saying, how did Mark Caputo and Axios end up with a tape
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that, I don't know, may evolve into a scandal the scale of Watergate, sir?
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And then secondly, my co-author on this, Alex Thompson, has co-authored a book
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that talks about the cover-up from the Biden operation of his age.
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And combined with sort of both of our reputations
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I started asking for this on January 22nd of the new administration.
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like, no one at the Department of Justice knew where they were.
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It prompted an actual search to just locate these things
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and figure out if the tape matches the transcript
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in the transition they're supposed to do the change of command,
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that this was not like in, like, the top two or three things
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on the checklist that they said, okay, her tapes over here,
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let's storm, that the beachhead and landing teams
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at the Department of Justice at the White House,
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including those at some of the most senior levels,
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And this was, like, January 22nd was the first day I asked.
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I have a feeling I was led at one point to believe
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But it just gives you an idea of this sort of mad dash
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that they went through sort of looking through file cabinets
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Caputo, when's the first time that you and Alex
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Yeah, Tuesday is when we started listening to them.
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And what's—these interviews took place over two days,
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The first day is where Biden just really doesn't sound with it.
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I would imagine at a certain point some people will say,
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well, yeah, he was tired because he was up all night
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dealing with the crisis that unfolded in Israel
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October 9th, he's much more with it and much cleaner.
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So there's like a good day Biden and a bad day Biden.
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And I got to tell you, like, that's just painful listening.
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You had played that first clip at the top of the show
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where he is kind of fumbling around in the recesses of his mind
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to find these words and figure out these dates.
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who sort of take on the role of memory caretaker for him.
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And one of the things that struck me when I listened to it more closely,
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is that this takes place in the White House map room.
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And the ticking is this sort of metronomic reminder of the passage of time.
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It's something like Edgar Allan Poe or something,
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given you've covered this for a couple of years
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how do you write about uncomfortable silences, right?
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I was thinking about it in a very process-oriented way.
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Part of the reason that we had gotten these tapes,
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It was pretty clear then that he was having age problems.
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