Biden sues Justice Department to stop release of audio from interviews
Former President Joe Biden sued the U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday, asking a federal judge to block the release of audio recordings and transcripts of his private conversations with the ghostwriter of his 2017 memoir.
The case stems from a 2024 Freedom of Information Act request by the conservative Heritage Foundation, which later filed its own lawsuit seeking Biden’s remarks to Mark Zwonitzer while they were writing “Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose.”
The Justice Department originally withheld the materials, saying they were exempt from disclosure. But during President Donald Trump’s second term, Biden attorney Amy Jeffress says in Tuesday’s filing in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., that the department “reversed that position.”
In February, she wrote that “without any formal explanation for its about-face,” the department notified Biden it intended to release the audio and transcripts to the FOIA plaintiffs. On May 5, the Office of the Deputy Attorney General said the materials would be released, with limited redactions, to the Heritage plaintiffs and Congress on June 15.
Jeffress said the conversations with Zwonitzer covered a difficult year in Biden’s life beginning around Thanksgiving 2014, which she described as one of the most consequential politically and most painful personally. Biden argues the material is personal and exempt under FOIA, and his lawsuit states that “every American, including a sitting or former Vice President, has a right to privacy in the personal conversations he has within his own home.”
The Heritage Foundation also sought records used by former special counsel Robert Hur in his 2023 report on Biden’s handling of classified documents, which described him as “painfully slow” and noted memory struggles.
Audio from Hur’s interview with Biden reportedly confirmed memory lapses, which White House officials disputed at the time. Hur declined to bring criminal charges.
Without court intervention, the materials are set for release on June 15.
