From archery to ‘risque’ pictures of Jill: Eight things Hur transcript tells us about Biden

US president regularly went off topic during interviews over classified documents

A report into Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents made headlines in January over claims about the president’s memory.
Robert Hur, the justice department’s special counsel, was investigating whether Mr Biden should be charged for allegedly mishandling state secrets. However, the two men ended up discussing far more together.
Over two days of interviews, and a transcript that covered 268 pages, Mr Biden discussed his time as president, vice-president, a senator, a law clerk – and what he enjoyed doing in his free time.
He frequently joked and teased justice department lawyers, and veered off into anecdotes, despite attempts by Mr Hur, who is facing questions in Congress on Tuesday over his final report, to steer the conversation back to the classified documents.
Mr Biden also enthusiastically discussed his love of electric cars, architecture, and his wife, Jill – who was said to have been exasperated by his chaotic filing system.
Mr Biden surprised himself with an archery display on a trip to Mongolia in 2011, apparently striking a target from a hundred yards away.
While “not a bad archer”, he told Mr Hur, hitting the makeshift target mounted on bales of hay with a bow and arrow was “pure luck”.
“I don’t know if it was to embarrass me or to make a point, but I get handed the bow and arrow,” he recalled.
“I turned to the prime minister and handed it to him and the poor son of a b— couldn’t pull it back.”
At one point, Mr Biden joked with interviewers about the FBI finding pictures of his wife in her “bathing suit” while they searched his home in Delaware.
“I just hope you didn’t find any risqué pictures of my wife in a bathing suit, which you probably did. She’s beautiful,” he said, prompting laughter from the room.
He then clarified that he was “kidding”. The US President often returned to the topic of FBI searches, claiming they knew his home better than he did.
Mr Biden sees himself as a “frustrated architect”, claiming to have designed his lake house in Wilmington, Delaware “so the sun would always shine”.
“I’m a frustrated architect, and if you went through, you probably saw all those significant number of house plans that I’ve drawn,” he said.
He claimed that his wife had offered to pay for him to attend an architectural school in a bid to persuade him against running for the Senate “for the 19th time”.
“I’m deadly earnest, not a joke,” he added.
Mr Biden repeatedly attempted to discuss cars with Mr Hur, at one point complaining he could only drive his vintage Corvette along his driveway.
At another point, he tried to engage the prosecutor in a discussion about electric vehicles – disregarding the special counsel’s attempts to regain control of the conversation.
“You know how it works? It’s really cool,” he said.
“You step your foot on the accelerator all the way down until it gets about six, seven grand. Then all the sudden it will say ‘launch.’ All you do is take your foot off the brake.”
The transcript indicates that he then made a “car sound”. “It’s on my bucket list,” Mr Hur promised.
Jill Biden apparently despaired over her husband’s filing system and urged him to be more like former Republican president Ronald Reagan.
“She wanted nothing to do with my filing system,” Mr Biden said of his wife.
At another point, he admitted: “I wish I could say I was more organised. No, I’m not being facetious. I’m being deadly earnest.
“Jill used to say to me, you ought to be like… Franklin Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan. I said, don’t make me like Ronald Reagan, I’d joke.
“Every night, he’d come home and he’d write a diary about what happened that day, who he spoke to, classified, unclassified, just everything he’d write in it, and he kept it all.”
Mr Biden indicated he had started thinking about where to locate his presidential library – but had “no idea” where to put it.
The library, which will contain records from his administration, is traditionally located in the president’s home state. Mr Biden said he was considering different locations, however.
“My recollection is there’s people competing,” Mr Biden said. “Syracuse University would like it, University of Delaware would like it. They want to do it down here in Washington.”
Mr Biden decided against pursuing a career in law after representing a client who had lost part of their penis in a fire.
He encountered the 23-year-old victim, who was injured working in an oil refinery because he was “wearing the wrong pants”, as a clerk in a Delaware law firm.
“This poor kid is down a hundred-foot vessel chimney, scraping the hydrogen bubbles off of the inside,” he recounted.
“And he was wearing the wrong pants, wrong jeans… a spark caught fire and got caught in the containment vessel and he lost part of his penis and one of his testicles.”
Looking at the man’s family after the trial, he realised: “Son of a b—, I’m in the wrong business, I’m not made for this.”
Mr Biden repeatedly forgot what a fax machine was called while describing the layout of the library in his Delaware home.
At one point, Ed Siskel, the White House Counsel, supplied the word as the US President appeared to struggle and referred to his “copy machine”.
Mr Biden said: “The library has two filing cabinets in it, and it has built into the walls… a space far a copy machine, for a – what do you call it, when they send these?”
“Fax machine,” Mr Siskel interjected. “Fax machine,” Mr Biden confirmed.