Biden to fight DOJ plan to release audio of his talks with ghostwriter
The Justice Department said former President Joe Biden plans to intervene in the case to block the Trump administration’s effort to release 70 hours of partially redacted audio recordings of interviews he conducted in 2017 with a ghostwriter who worked with Biden on his memoirs. new court papers.
Justice Department lawyers told a federal judge in Washington on Friday that they expect Biden to try to “prevent such disclosure” of the audio recordings to Congress and the conservative Heritage Foundation, which sued last year for access to the materials.
Justice Department lawyers notified U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich that they had set a deadline of Tuesday for Biden to take legal action to block the eviction, agreeing to delay any announcement until June 15 if Biden goes to court before this week’s deadline.
A spokesman for Biden confirmed Sunday that he plans to resist releasing the audio publicly or to lawmakers.
“President Biden fully cooperated with Special Counsel Hur and agreed to provide audio recordings of his conversations with his biographer for a book about his deceased son, on the condition that they not be made public,” Biden spokesman TJ Ducklo said in a statement. “The DOJ itself has said these tapes do not serve the public interest.”
“What’s going on right now is not about transparency. It’s about politics,” Ducklo continued. “If this administration were truly committed to transparency, it would release Volume 2 of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report on Donald Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents. This report contains information Americans truly deserve to see.”
A Heritage official said he would continue to fight for the information to be made public.
“These tapes will further prove the big lie about Biden’s fitness for office and the fact that Biden disclosed classified information,” said Mike Howell, president of Heritage’s Oversight Project. “The shenanigans are not over: At the last possible second and after every possible delaying tactic, autopen challenges the American People to gain transparency.”
The audio was obtained by investigators working with special counsel Robert Hur. was destroyed Appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland in 2023 After classified information was found in the files of a think tank to which Biden was affiliated after leaving the vice presidency and in the files at his home in Delaware. Free I finally decided not to blame Biden. Justice Department policy prohibits charging a sitting president, but the prosecutor said he would not file charges anyway because of Biden’s “poor memory” and cooperation with the investigation.
Audio of Biden’s interview with Hur leaked to public last year and was subsequently officially released. DOJ during the Biden administration He opposed the release of audio recordings of Biden’s conversations with the prosecutorhe argues that this could be weaponized on social media and elsewhere.
The audio file, which the Justice Department now plans to release, also includes Biden reading to Marc Zwonitzer from notebooks that authorities later determined contained classified information. According to excerpts of those conversations in Hur’s report, the recordings also show Biden telling the ghostwriter: “I found all the hidden stuff down there.”
Biden was adamant that he had not told Zwonitzer anything confidential.
“I did not share classified information,” the then-president insisted to reporters in February 2024. “I guarantee I didn’t share it.”
Records and transcripts that the DOJ plans to make public are expected to be redacted for privacy reasons and purportedly classified information to be removed.
According to Hur’s report, Zwonitzer attempted to delete the recordings, but investigators were able to recover them. The ghostwriter was granted immunity by prosecutors so he could share his account of what happened.
It’s unclear what legal arguments Biden’s lawyers plan to present to block the eviction. They may try to block disclosure in the FOIA case by claiming it would invade Biden’s privacy or that the audio and transcripts are personal, not federal, records. But those arguments are unlikely to prevent it from being presented to Congress.
To prevent this disclosure, the former president will have to argue that lawmakers unfairly targeted him because he was serving as president and that the information sought was unlikely to be necessary for any legislation Congress might consider.
Inside 2020 Supreme Court decision On the House panel’s request for President Donald Trump’s tax returns, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority: “Congressional requests for the President’s papers may affect the relationship between the branches, regardless of whether those papers are personal or official.”
The justices ultimately sent the case back to a lower court to weigh the House’s need for information against Trump’s interest in avoiding harassment and interference with executive privilege.
Lawmakers eventually received Trump’s two-year returns instead of the ten years they had originally sought.
