Joe Simonson, a former Undergraduate Fellow of the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization (AHI), has since his graduation in 2015 from Hamilton College embarked in a career in journalism. In the March 25 issue of The Washington Free Beacon, Mr. Simonson recently reported that an autobiographical story by President Biden about the start of his political career may be “Almost Certainly Bogus.”
In his interview last fall with Robert Hur, special counsel for the investigation into his possible legal violations in the storage of classified documents, Biden gave a rambling, autobiographical response to Hur’s question about where he had kept national security records at his house. Part of Biden’s response was a recollection of how he decided, more than 50 years ago, that corporate law was “the wrong business” for him.
In his co-authored article, Simonson writes:
“Fresh out of law school and working as a clerk for a high-powered Wilmington, Delaware, law firm, Biden, in his telling, was tapped to defend a construction company sued by a 23-year-old welder [who was badly injured in] a fire that broke out when he was working … at a Delaware City plant. Thanks to Biden’s shrewd legal defense … the injured man lost the case. ‘I wrote this memo. And son of a b—-, it prevailed,’ Biden told Hur … ‘And I looked over at that kid … and I thought, ‘son of a b—-, I’m in the wrong business, I’m not made for this.’
Biden was so wracked by guilt that he … walked into a public defender’s office to ask for a job that very day … Thus began, according to a New York Times report on the special counsel interview, ‘a career that would one day take him to the White House.’
But this story is almost certainly a complete work of fiction.
Although Biden did work at a law firm [that was] tapped to defend a construction company in a negligence suit like the one he described … the case concluded in 1968, while Biden was still in law school. And the welder won.”
The Free Beacon investigation notes that although it is possible Biden might have been remembering some other lawsuit involving a welder at the same company, no records for this case could be found, and a staff member at the National Archives “could not locate any cases with similar fact patterns.”
The article is “based on a review of court records obtained from the National Archives as well as contemporaneous news reports and interviews with Biden’s former law firm colleagues and federal court clerks.”
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