Audio appears to show Biden's struggles in special counsel interview

Then-President Biden haltingly answered and frequently paused as he seemingly struggled to answer a special counsel's questions in 2023 about classified documents he kept at his home, according to audio from the interview the news outlet Axios published Friday.

The former president also appeared to struggle to recall dates related to his time as vice president, his son's death and when President Trump was elected to his first term.

A transcript of special counsel Robert Hur’s two-day interview was made public last year, but the Biden White House refused to release the audio recording. Hur ultimately declined to bring charges against Biden in the classified documents case and wrote that the president at the time was a "well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory."

Trump recently told reporters that it would be left to the Justice Department and Attorney General Pam Bondi to decide whether the two-year-old tapes of the interview would be released publicly.

The upcoming book "Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again," co-written by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’s Alex Thompson, has renewed questions about Biden's decline near the end of his time in office and as he launched a campaign for a second term.

Trump earlier on Friday addressed the audio, saying, “Look, everybody understands the condition of him [Biden.]"

He continued, “I know people that are 89, 90, 92, 93 years old and are literally perfect. But Joe was not one of them, and they did a lot of hiding. They were, they were really playing games. And, you know, you can’t do that. Our country’s at stake.”