Biden scrambles to block release of embarrassing secret tapes as Trump unloads with brutal three-word verdict

Joe Biden sues Donald Trump’s Justice Department to block the release of audio recordings he made with his ghostwriter; material investigators later used to question his mental competence.

The former President’s latest legal action, filed in federal court on Tuesday, comes just weeks before the Justice Department plans to release explosive tapes and transcripts to Republican lawmakers and the conservative Heritage Foundation group.

While having private meetings at his home with biographer Mark Zwonitzer in 2016 and 2017, Biden wrote the memoir ‘Promise Me, Dad’, which chronicles his decision to consider running for president while his eldest son Beau was battling brain cancer.

Nearly 70 hours of recordings were later seized during Special Counsel Robert Hur’s investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents.

Hur determined that Biden read classified materials aloud to Zwonitzer but recommended against prosecution because Biden’s declining memory would make it difficult to prove he acted deliberately.

The recordings were at the center of Hur’s bombshell finding in February 2024 that the 81-year-old was “an old man with a poor memory.” The explosive characterization emerged in the midst of Biden’s re-election campaign, fueling speculation about his fitness to serve a second term.

The recordings show Biden telling Zwonitzer on tape, “I found all the classified information down there,” and Hur’s report says the former vice president read diary entries containing classified intelligence “almost verbatim” at least three times.

Court records also revealed that Zwonitzer deleted some of the audio after learning Hur had been appointed special counsel in 2023, but investigators later recovered the material.

On Truth Social, Trump responded to Biden’s effort to keep the tapes secret by calling his predecessor ‘A Crooked Politician!!!’ He reacted by labeling it as.

On Truth Social, Trump responded to Biden’s effort to keep the tapes secret by calling his predecessor ‘A Crooked Politician!!!’ He reacted by labeling it as.

Hur determined that Biden read classified materials aloud to Zwonitzer but recommended against prosecution because Biden’s declining memory would make it difficult to prove he acted deliberately

Biden’s legal team argued that releasing the tapes would amount to an ‘unjustified attack on President Biden’s privacy’.

“Every American, including a sitting or former Vice President, has a right to the privacy of personal conversations in his or her own home,” Biden’s lawyers wrote.

Biden’s legal team has argued that if the Justice Department obtains private information through a criminal investigation, that information should not be disclosed publicly.

The tapes in question are different from Hur’s interview with Biden, which the former president also fought to keep from being made public.

Although Hur’s investigation did not suggest any criminal charges, it was painful during Biden’s re-election bid against Trump in 2024.

The Biden investigation was launched in January 2023 after classified documents from his time as vice president were found in his former Washington office and at his home in Wilmington, Delaware.

Then-Attorney General Merrick Garland reacted by appointing Robert Hur as special counsel.

Materials taken from Biden’s home included classified documents related to US military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, as well as notebooks containing Biden’s handwritten entries on national security and foreign policy.

Despite Biden’s mishandling of classified materials, the special prosecutor recommended against the charges, writing that the former president ‘will present himself to the jury as a sympathetic, well-intentioned old man with a short memory, as he did in our interview with him.’

Hur added: ‘It would be difficult to convince the jury that they should convict him, then a former president in his eighties, of a serious crime requiring mental resolve.’