Former President Joe Biden filed a lawsuit against the Justice Department on Tuesday in a bid to block the public release of audio recordings and transcripts from a 2017 interview with his memoir ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer.
The recordings and transcripts were originally swept up by former special counsel Robert Hur during his investigation into Biden’s handling of classified materials. That investigation concluded with a nearly 400-page report released on Feb. 8, 2025.
According to that report, the investigated files “included (1) marked classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, and (2) notebooks containing Mr. Biden’s handwritten entries about issues of national security and foreign policy implicating sensitive intelligence sources and methods.”
The Department of Justice is currently on track to release the audio files and transcripts to the Heritage Foundation and the House Judiciary Committee on June 15. Biden’s legal team is seeking a court order to halt that disclosure, arguing that making the files public would violate his personal rights.
“Every American, including a sitting or former Vice President, has a right to privacy in the personal conversations he has within his own home,” Biden’s attorneys wrote in the filing, asserting that the release would “constitute an unwarranted invasion of President Biden’s privacy.”
The lawsuit specifically aims to prevent the materials from being shared with the conservative think tank and House Republicans. Following the news of the legal filing on Tuesday, President Donald Trump responded to the situation on social media, posting “A Crooked Politician!!!” on his Truth Social platform.
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