Biden sues justice department to block release of Hur interview audio | Joe Biden
Former president Joe Biden has filed a lawsuit to block the department of justice (DoJ) from releasing transcripts and audio recordings of interviews that revealed his frequent memory lapses and helped derail his 2024 re-election campaign.
A decade of interviews with his biographer fell into the hands of special counsel Robert Hur, who was appointed to examine allegations that Biden improperly handled classified documents.
Hur evaluated the files and also spent five hours interviewing Biden himself, concluding in a 2024 report to Congress that there was no criminal wrongdoing but portraying the then-81-year-old president as a “sympathetic, well-intentioned old man with a short memory.”
Biden withdrew from the 2024 election after his age and mental competency were repeatedly questioned, endorsing Kamala Harris as the ultimately unsuccessful Democratic candidate.
His lawsuit, filed Tuesday in federal court in Washington, D.C., accuses the Justice Department of “unwarranted invasion of President Biden’s privacy.”
It aims to prevent the department, which once fought to keep transcripts and records secret, from turning them over to the Republican-controlled House judiciary committee and the conservative Heritage Foundation.
“Every American, including a sitting or former vice president, has the right to the privacy of personal conversations in his or her own home,” his lawyers wrote about conversations in 2016 and 2017 with author Mark Zwonitzer, who has collaborated with Biden on two memoirs.
“And when the U.S. Department of Justice obtains this proprietary information through a criminal investigation, the Department has a special responsibility to protect that information from disclosure.”
Recordings made during and immediately after Biden served as Barack Obama’s vice president were reviewed by Hur, a Republican, as part of the investigation.
In his report, Hur found that Biden “intentionally withheld and disclosed classified materials, including “secret documents regarding military and foreign policy in Afghanistan,” while he was a private citizen after his term as vice president, but said this did not warrant criminal charges.”
Biden welcomed the 345-page report, but pushed back on Hur’s claim that he had a “significantly limited” memory because he had difficulty remembering important events and facts.
“I have a good memory,” he told a reporter in February 2024, noting that his interview with Hur took place immediately after the Hamas October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. “I was in the middle of dealing with an international crisis.”
Biden has separately fought the release of an audio recording of his interview with Hur, part of which was leaked last year. The Republican-controlled House voted to retain Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, in 2024. in contempt of Congress Because he refused to hand over that audio after the White House exercised executive privilege and shielded it from Congress.
Although Biden insists that he treats classified information seriously, the minutes show the following: was at times uncertain about dates and details and said he was unfamiliar with the paper trail of some of the sensitive documents he handled.
Republicans argued that Biden was given a warrant by his own justice department and that Donald Trump, who is also under investigation for improperly taking and storing classified documents at his Florida vacation home, Mar-a-Lago, was unfairly victimized by prosecutors.
Trump was investigated and indicted in a case by another special counsel, Jack Smith, but was ultimately dismissed by Florida judge Aileen Cannon, whom he appointed. In February, Cannon blocked the justice department from releasing Smith’s report on the investigation.
Democrats emphasized that Biden was cooperating with the investigation against him and compared it to Smith’s lawsuit against Trump, who is accused of refusing to return classified documents requested by the National Archives.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
