Judicial Watch: Emails Reveal White House’s Detailed Revisions to Transcript of President Biden Interview with Special Counsel

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it received 52 pages of documents from the U.S. Department of Justice showing White House staffers suggesting edits to transcripts of President Biden’s interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur regarding his handling of secret documents.

The documents were obtained thanks to a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Department of Justice for records of communication between the agency and White House regarding the altered transcripts of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s October 2023 interviews of President Biden in the criminal investigation into Biden’s theft and disclosure of classified records (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:24-cv-02176)).

 In a separate lawsuit brought by Judicial Watch, a federal court ordered the Department of Justice to declare whether it intends to continue denying Judicial Watch’s request for the full audio of former President Joe Biden’s interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur. The Trump Justice Department has until May 20, 2025, to report its position on the release of the videotape.   ((Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:24-cv-00700))

Also, previously in that lawsuit, Judicial Watch forced the Biden administration to confess that the transcripts of the audio recordings have been altered and are not accurate.

The new documents provided in this case include a chart of suggested changes by Biden White House and personal lawyers to the transcript. Also included are emails that detail Biden lawyer Bob Bauer’s requesting access to interview exhibits and a meeting with the special counsel to discuss the case. Justice Department official Marc Krickbaum confirmed most White House revisions to the transcript were accepted, including minor clarifications and changes potentially masking Biden’s confusion, such as correcting who said “Yeah” or altering references to Biden’s Delaware garage and President Biden’s seeming inability to recall the name of the Defense Secretary.

“These new documents provide an extraordinary insight into a cover-up of the White House of Biden’s cognitive challenges,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said. “The Bondi Justice Department should follow up with the full release of the actual audio of President Biden’s disastrous interview with the special counsel on his document theft and mishandling.”

On October 12, 2023, Bob Bauer, personal attorney to Biden and White House Counsel for President Obama, writes to Marc Krickbaum, then-Deputy Special Counsel, and others, including several White House staffers:

Gentlemen:

Now that the interviews of the President have concluded, we would like to discuss with you the written presentations that we are preparing to aid in the resolution of this matter, as well as the schedule for their timely submission. To this end, we request a meeting for the purpose of hearing from you where matters stand in the case, which would enable us to focus our presentations on the issues it would be most helpful for us to address. The meeting would include both personal and White House Counsel.

***

As you know, we also have an outstanding request for copies of the exhibits you provided in your interview of the President. We have noted that these exhibits would be necessary in our review of the transcripts of the interviews to check for any omissions or inaccuracies. We believe it is fair that we have access to this material at least for this purpose. This is one of the issues we would like to resolve at the meeting, along with an understanding for our planning purposes of when the interview transcript may be available for review in both audio and video form.

In a follow-up email, he corrects himself: “…the reference to ‘video’ can, of course, be disregarded.”

On December 21, 2023, Krickbaum writes to Rachel F. Cotton, Deputy Counsel to the President in the Office of the White House Counsel, and others showing the court reporter rejected some of the proposed edits to the Biden transcript

Dick and Rachel, 

We had the court reporter who prepared the transcript review your suggested revisions. She accepted most of them. This table lists your revisions and then describes whether we did or did not make changes.

We may have to send the transcript itself on the high side [classified] next week. I will let you know when we do.

Thank you.

Marc

Some proposed transcript edits detailed in a chart produced by the Justice Department suggest that the Biden White House to transcript might be considered an effort to cover up Biden’s mental confusion. White House suggests:

PRESIDENT BIDEN: The date is 4-20-09. Was I still Vice President? I was, wasn’t I? Yeah. Yeah.

Mr. Bauer: Yeah.

President Biden: Yeah.

On this entry, the White House attaches a note: “Audio indicates that ‘Yeah’ was said twice in succession by President Biden. Mr. Bauer did not say ‘Yeah.’

The court reporter records:

PRESIDENT BIDEN: The date is 4-20-09. Was I still Vice President? I was, wasn’t I? Yeah. Yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah.

PRESIDENT BIDEN: Yeah.

Other changes also seem significant. One seems to refer to Biden’s garage at his Delaware home, where secret documents were found.

The White House proposed this change:

were delivered my the garage

The court reporter records:

were delivered to the – my garage.

At another point, Bien might have been confused about the name of the Secretary of Defense. The White House proposed this change:

Secretary of Defense? Gates

UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: Gates.

A White House entry on that notes states:

            According to the audio, President Biden says “Gates” prior to the unidentified male speaker.

The court reporter records:

            Secretary of Defense? Gates?

            UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: Gates.

The White House responds:

The court reporter inserted a question mark that is unsupported by the audio recording. It is clear that the President said “Gates” as a statement rather than a question. We ask that the question mark be replaced with a period …

Regarding that last entry and another, on January 3, 2024, Amish [probably Amish Shah, Senior Associate Counsel in the White house Counsel’s Office], emails Krickbaum:

Thank you for sending. We have reviewed and are fine with almost all of the court reporter’s responses. However, we ask the SCO to reconsider the attached two corrections on Day 2. Both corrections are supported by the audio recording of the interview. 

On January 22, 2024, Krickbaum replies:

We will send a revised transcript of the President’s interview on yellow [higher security], and attached is a revised list of edits. For the two revisions you suggested in your last email, the court reporter adopted the second and adopted a slightly modified version of the first.

On February 28, 2024, an Executive Officer in the Special Counsel’s Office emails Free State Reporting:

Good evening. Would you be able to come back (hopefully, the last time) on Friday, 3/1 or Monday, 3/4 (the sooner, the better? There are more edits to the President’s transcript. I’ll have an exact number tomorrow. I’m getting the computer back so it will be blank when you arrive so it will need your software on it again. It got wiped when I thought everything was finished. I’ll meet you out front with a new parking pass. My apologies for the inconvenience.

It’s not clear what these last-minute changes were.

Judicial Watch has several ongoing FOIA lawsuits about Biden’s document scandals and the related unprecedented partisan prosecutorial and judicial abuses of former President Donald J. Trump.

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