Former President Joe Biden’s lawyers are racing to make sure nobody hears the tapes that could prove he mishandled classified documents, critics say.
The former president’s legal team is trying to block the Trump DOJ’s release of 70 hours of audio recordings from his 2017 conversations with ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer.
Critics say the recordings, gathered by Special Counsel Robert Hur, reveal the full picture of Biden’s cognitive decline and his reckless handling of classified material.
Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate said Friday in a court filing that Biden’s legal team had notified the DOJ he “intends to seek to intervene to prevent any such disclosures.”
The recordings were gathered during Hur’s investigation into Biden’s illegal storage of classified documents in his unlocked Delaware garage and at the Penn Biden Center. The tapes captured Biden reading from personal notebooks that contained classified entries.
In one exchange captured in Hur’s report, Biden reportedly admitted: “I just found all the classified stuff downstairs.”
According to Hur’s report, Biden’s ghostwriter later moved the files into his computer’s recycle bin after learning a special counsel had been appointed. Investigators were able to recover the deleted recordings. The writer was later granted immunity in exchange for his cooperation.
Biden’s “memory was significantly limited, both during his recorded interviews with the ghostwriter in 2017, and in his interview with our office in 2023,” the report concluded.
The Biden’s spokesman claimed the legal fight as a matter of principle, not panic.
“President Biden cooperated fully with Special Counsel Hur, and agreed to provide audiotapes of conversations with his biographer for a book about his deceased son on the condition that they would not be made public,” Ducklo said. “The DOJ themselves have said these tapes serve no public interest.”
The Heritage Foundation’s Mike Howell, whose FOIA lawsuit triggered the release fight, blasted Biden.
“These tapes will further prove the massive lie regarding Biden’s fitness for office and the fact Biden revealed classified information,” Howell said. “The shenanigans aren’t over: At the last possible second, and after every delay tactic possible, the autopen is objecting to the American People receiving transparency.”
Biden’s lawyers have until Tuesday to respond.