The Biden administration is blocking the release of audio from the president’s interview with the special counsel because everyone knows it will make Joe Biden sound even worse than the transcript reads.

Biden’s Department of Justice is preventing the release of the audio of Biden’s interview with former special counsel Robert Hur. You may recall that Hur declined to recommend charges against Biden because a jury would view him as an “elderly man with a poor memory” and that Biden forgot which years he was vice president and did not remember, even within several years, “when his son Beau died,” according to Hur’s report.

You can see these problems in the transcript of the interview, but congressional Republicans are justifiably asking for audio as well. This should not be a problem for Biden, whose handlers and allies insist that he is incredibly sharp behind the scenes and nothing like the doddering, forgetful man he is on camera. But Biden’s DOJ is protecting him, saying that releasing audio of an interview we already have the transcript for is a privacy violation because people may use artificial intelligence to manipulate the audio clips to make Biden look bad.

There is no logic in this fear. There is plenty of audio of Biden already out in the world to use to make artificial intelligence deepfake audios of him. In fact, there are hours of deepfake audios of Biden “playing” video games with other former presidents. If random people can use existing audio of Biden (who has been in the public view since the 1970s) to make it sound like he is playing video games, then “malicious actors” could clearly already fabricate special counsel interviews of Biden right now without the real audio from the interview.

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This is a weak, nonsensical excuse that contains just a little bit of honesty. Biden’s DOJ is obviously worried that releasing the audio could hurt Biden’s campaign, but not because it will lead to AI deepfakes — Biden’s DOJ is worried that the audio will show just how badly Biden stumbled through an interview that got him labeled as an “elderly man with poor memory” and that audio of things such as Biden forgetting the year his son died would sound even more damaging than a sanitized transcript reads. (We also know that Biden’s White House has edited transcripts to read better than the audio sounds. Make of that what you will.)

If Biden were truly sharp behind the scenes, he would have nothing to worry about with the release of the audio. That is obviously not the case, which is why his DOJ is playing politics and protecting what is left of his image. So much for all those promises about bringing “transparency and truth back to government.”