The House Oversight and Judiciary committees are demanding the Department of Justice turn over the transcript of President Biden’s October 2023 interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur, who investigated the president for his mishandling of classified documents. 

Mr. Hur sparked a firestorm with his account of that meeting, where he described Mr. Biden as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.’ 

In a subpoena issued Tuesday, the committee chairmen, James Comer and Jim Jordan, say it is imperative to the impeachment inquiry that they read the transcript. They say it could include information about whether Mr. Biden was hoarding documents about the Biden family business, which presumably would include the foreign business dealings of the president’s son, Hunter. 

The younger Mr. Biden’s business affairs, and his father’s role in promoting them, are a core subject of the GOP’s ongoing impeachment investigation into the president.

“The Committees are concerned that President Biden may have retained sensitive documents related to specific countries involving his family’s foreign business dealings,” Messrs. Comer and Jordan wrote to Attorney General Garland in their letter accompanying the subpoena.

“The Committees further seek to understand whether the White House or President Biden’s personal attorneys placed any limitations or scoping restrictions during the interviews with Special Counsel Hur … precluding or addressing any potential statements directly linking President Biden to troublesome foreign payments,” they wrote.

On February 12, Mr. Comer asked that the DOJ turn over the transcript of Mr. Biden’s interview and the interview Mr. Hur conducted with the president’s ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer, who had access to classified documents about Afghanistan even though he did not have a security clearance.

In their Tuesday letter, Messrs. Comer and Jordan say they were rebuffed by the DOJ in that first request, leading to Tuesday’s subpoena. “The Department … offered no timeframe by which it expected to make any productions or, indeed, any commitment that it would produce all of the material requested,” the chairmen wrote.

Republicans are also interested in what the interview transcript divulges about Mr. Biden’s cognitive awareness after the special counsel’s alarming account, which described the president as so forgetful he could not remember when his eldest son, Beau, died.

“The Justice Department has closed its investigation into classified documents, but the Oversight Committee and Judiciary Committee’s investigation continues,” Mr. Comer said in a statement. “We owe it to the American people to provide transparency and accountability about the extent of Joe Biden retaining sensitive materials and the concerns raised about his current mental state and fitness to be President of the United States.”

On February 8, Mr. Hur released his report into Mr. Biden’s mishandling of classified information, saying that he had “willfully” retained information, but there was not enough evidence for a jury to convict. Only Mr. Hur’s subsequent description of Mr. Biden’s mental state has proven hugely damaging. “It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him — by then a former president well into his eighties — of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness,” Mr. Hur wrote.