President Joe Biden said he “sometimes gets confused by dates” during testimony he gave to U.S. prosecutors as part of the investigation into secret government documents found in his home.
The full statement was obtained by the Associated Press news agency and revealed this Tuesday (12).
As a result, Biden was investigated after his lawyers found secret documents in his garage that the president says he took by mistake when he was Barack Obama’s vice president.
In February, prosecutor Robert Hur, responsible for the case, concluded the investigation and said, in a report, that the US president was not guilty in the case, but pointed out Biden’s “memory problems”.
Also this Tuesday, Hur gave testimony in the Chamber of Deputies about the report.
In statements to the prosecutor seen by the AP, Joe Biden repeatedly told the prosecutor throughout five hours of testimony that he was sometimes confused about dates and said he was unfamiliar with the documentation he himself handled.
Hur, in his report, concluded that Biden should not face criminal charges for the misuse of documents, but also noted the president’s age and competence.
The special prosecutor, in turn, maintained his assessment of the president’s memory as “accurate and fair”.
“What I wrote is what I believe the evidence shows and what I hope the jurors perceive and believe. I didn’t clean up my explanation. Nor did I unfairly belittle the president,” Hur alleged to Congress.
Although Biden fumbled some details in his interview, the full transcript may raise questions about Hur’s description of the 81-year-old president. The prosecutor said the president has “significant limitations” in his memory.
