President Joe Biden was caught in a big lie and faced the wrath of fact checkers from Washington Post who awarded him four ‘Pinnochios’ – the metric used to rate lies. “I did not walk in the shoes of generations of students who walked these grounds. But I walked other grounds. Because I’m so damn old, I was there as well. You think I’m kidding, man. It seems like yesterday the first time I got arrested,” President Biden said in remarks on voting rights in Atlanta, on Jan. 11, 2022.
The Washington Post reports, however, that there is no evidence that Biden was ever arrested. The comment made by Biden in Atlanta appears to allude to a story he has told no fewer than five times, crediting it to his late mother Catherine “Jean” Biden who died in 2010. “A true story,” as he described it, Biden recounted the story many years later, but with minor differences each time.
Between 2018 and 2020, Biden has repeated the story at least four times. At the Economic Club of Southwest Michigan on October 16, 2018, at the University of Utah on December 13, 2018, at Nevada African Methodist Episcopal Church on February 16, 2020, and in Oprah Winfrey Zoom conversation on October 28, 2020.
Speaking at the African Methodist Episcopal Church of Nevada event on Feb. 16, 2020, Biden referred to his mother’s version of his arrest: “You were 13, I told you not to go there, all those people were protesting, and you got arrested standing on the porch with the Black family”.
The analysis shows that Biden mentioned 3 different ages: 13, 14 and 15 on different occasions. He also claimed that he was arrested while standing on the porch with the black couple. However, other two versions of Biden’s story say he was taken home by police after the protest after standing on the porch. Per the law, it means there will be no record of the arrest.
In 1955, Biden’s family moved to the town of Lynnfield, near Mayfield, where the supposed protest took place. Biden was 13. However, it is not clear where the protest took place, as one of the versions mentions Carrcroft, which is also located near Mayfield.
But, according to local newspapers, no protests were recorded in 1956 or 1957 in the area. The only one recorded was in 1959 when Biden would have been 16 or 17 years old. A real estate agent in Collins Park who sold a house to a black couple was picketed by protestors back then. The neighborhood was nearly nine miles from the home of Biden.
Surprisingly, in Biden’s memoir “Promise me, Dad” which was released in 2017, no mentions of arrests as a teenager were made. Biden only mentions comments made by his mother during discussions about joining the Democratic ticket: “My ninety-year old mother, who had watched my fight for civil rights and racial equality, put it this way at a larger family meeting the next day: ‘So let me get this straight, honey. The first African-American in history who has a chance to be president says he needs your help to win — and you said no’.”