White House faces tough call on releasing special counsel transcript

The White House is weighing whether to release the transcript of President Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur, which could either defuse concerns about Biden’s age or add to them.

The White House has left the door open to releasing the transcript, once it is declassified, after issuing a fierce defense against what they described as “gratuitous” and “politically motivated” passages that characterized Biden as an elderly man with memory problems.

Some Biden allies suggest releasing the transcript could be in the president’s best interest — at least if it provided evidence to counter the most damaging parts of Hur’s report.

One former White House aide said the transcript could “provide a powerful tool to refute the narrative about his age and prove Hur was playing politics with the report.”

But it’s not entirely clear the White House wants the transcript out.

The White House counsel’s office is “discussing” and “looking at” whether to release the transcript, which would have to go through a declassification process, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday.

“It is not a no and it is not a yes, it is we are looking at this,” Jean-Pierre told reporters. “There’s processes, there’s protocols, and they’re looking through that.”

Bob Bauer, the president’s personal attorney, said Sunday that the matter of whether to release transcripts of Biden’s interviews is up to government, dodging whether he’d back their release.

House Republicans are seeking to get their hands on the transcripts, too.

The GOP chairs of three congressional panels — House Oversight and Accountability Chair James Comer (Ky.), House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (Ohio) and House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (Mo.) — on Monday in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland asked the Department of Justice to turn over transcripts and recordings.

“The Committee on the Judiciary requires these documents for its ongoing oversight of the Department’s commitment to impartial justice and its handling of the investigation and prosecution of President Biden’s presumptive opponent, Donald J. Trump, in the November 2024 presidential election,” wrote the chairs of the three committees.

Republicans are upset Hur did not charge Biden for his handling of classified documents outside the White House as former President Trump faces a prosecution for reems of documents kept at his Florida residence.

The GOP could also subpoena the Justice Department for the records if it came to that, which could add to the pressure on the White House.

This battle has been overshadowed to a degree by the report’s stunning language about Biden’s age. Biden, 81, has seen concerns about his age become a major political issue in the 2024 campaign. It may be his biggest challenge in defeating the likely GOP nominee, Trump, who is 77 himself.

Some Democrats think the transcript could help Biden with that challenge if there are passages in the transcript that would back up allegations Hur’s remarks about the president’s age and memory were politically motivated.

“Given the fact that the age issue is not going away and its already out there, the risk of another news cycle is pretty low unless there is something pretty damaging in that transcript,” said one Democratic source who spoke to The Hill.

“It feels to me that it’s probably better to get [it] out there because the sense I’m getting is Hur really stepped over the line, based on this, and you may want to use the transcript to rebut that pretty hard.”

The former White House aide said Bauer’s opinion might be paramount.

“If Bauer was in the room, which he was, and if he believed the president’s responses contradict Hur’s depiction, then I don’t know why they wouldn’t want the transcripts released,” the former White House aide said. “Only those in the room know for sure whether releasing those transcripts is politically advantageous for the White House and the president.”

National security experts who spoke on the condition of anonymity guessed it would take a few weeks to go through the declassification process, pointing to the fact that much of the information is outdated considering it is from Biden’s time as vice president.

A former Trump aide told The Hill it took about a week and a half to go through and declassify the former president’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that was at the heart of his first impeachment case.

Biden’s interview with Hur spanned about five hours and took place in the days following the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, a point that the president and his team have repeatedly brought up.

Some Democrats think that even if the transcript were released quickly, it wouldn’t necessarily help Biden.

“In a world where ‘I don’t recall’ is twisted into a political weapon, releasing the transcript only feeds the frenzy,” said Democratic strategist Michael Starr Hopkins.

Ivan Zapien, a former Democratic National Committee official, said it’s in the best interest of Biden’s reelection campaign to let the news story fade.

“I think the campaign should give this story no oxygen. Let it simmer down, and move on,” he said.

Biden has tried to defuse concerns about his age through jokes. On Monday, he attempted to make light of it after the report, saying in remarks, “I know I don’t look like it, but I’ve been around a while.”

Jean-Pierre called Biden “sharp” and “on top of things” on Monday when questioned on how his memory comes across behind closed doors. She also said that Hur is “not a medical doctor” and that he is therefore not qualified to speak about Biden’s memory.

Other Democrats think the narrative that Biden is too old is overplayed and want the story to move past even questions about whether to release the transcript.

“The best thing to do would be for our friends in the press to focus less on the Hur report, which is pretty clear that there is nothing actionable for [the Department of Justice] to move forward on, and more on the issues that voters care about,” one former Biden official said.