Biden Lawyer Tells Psaki President Was Pointing Out ‘Flawed’ Questions During Special Counsel Hur Interview
MSNBC host and ex-Biden press secretary Jen Psaki asked Biden attorney Bob Bauer to explain his claim there were “bad questions” asked during President Joe Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur — which Hur says Biden wasn’t shy about pointing out.
Hur’s report on Biden’s handling of sensitive documents dropped Thursday. The good news for Biden is there will be no charges against the president — but the bad news is the report is chock full of damaging asides about him and his memory.
Biden responded to the report Thursday night in a fiery press scrum, and other officials and allies have followed suit — including Bauer.
On Monday’s edition of MSNBC’s Inside With Jen Psaki, Psaki asked Bauer about his reference to “bad questions” in an earlier interview, and Bauer used Hur’s “flawed” questioning to turn the tables and illustrate a point about drawing conclusions from such errors:
PSAKI: You also said yesterday, which check out to me, I underlined it, that he — the special counsel was asking bad questions. I mean, the thing is with these reports, you only see one side.
Tell me a little bit more about that. Why were they bad or imprecise, I guess?
BAUER: I wasn’t suggesting that every single question was bad. I was simply pointing out that the special counsel indicated that somehow the president wasn’t able to answer questions directly or clearly.
And I was simply suggesting, again, based on what I clearly recall, and I think all of us in the room recall, that the president was not only answering questions, he was pointing out flaws and lines of questioning that were put to him by the special counsel.
On a couple of occasions, he noted that there was a problem with the question. I think it became immediately cleared everyone in the room. There was a problem with the question. I didn’t deduce from that that there was something wrong with the special counsel’s mental acuity. I just assumed that in those instances, he had framed his questions poorly.
But what I was trying to emphasize there was that the president was engaged with this interview. He was able to provide his best recollection. And on a couple of occasions, he pointed out that there were problems with the questions put to him that I think everybody in the room recognized he correctly identified.
PSAKI: As someone who has been on the receiving ends of the president unraveling your line of questioning, I have been, I know you have been, I felt — I related a little in that moment.
Watch above via MSNBC’s Inside With Jen Psaki.
