(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) Facing several legal roadblocks, former President Joe Biden halted his efforts to prevent the DOJ from releasing audio recordings and transcripts of his controversial interviews with ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer.
The recordings and documents were obtained during former Special Counsel Robert Hur’s investigation into Biden’s alleged mishandling of classified documents after he left the vice presidency in 2017.
The interviews span roughly 70 hours of Biden speaking with Zwonitzer for his 2019 memoir, Promise Me, Dad. The audio recordings reportedly show Biden openly discussing he had classified materials.
The Heritage Foundation, alongside the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee, filed an open records lawsuit in 2024 seeking access to the records.
Biden sued the DOJ on May 26 in an attempt to block the release of the files.
His lawsuit met its first defeat after U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich ruled that the public’s interest in the files outweighed his privacy concerns, according to reports.
He challenged that ruling by appealing to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. A three-judge panel recognized Biden’s interest in protecting personal information, but it ruled: “DOJ’s redactions, however, meaningfully narrow the requested disclosure’s incursion on that interest.”
Now that he dropped the lawsuit, the DOJ will proceed with the release.
Biden did not face criminal charges in the classified documents matter after Hur claimed that the evidence did not establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
“Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen,” Hur wrote in his final report.
The documents included “marked classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan,” as well as “notebooks containing Mr. Biden’s handwritten entries about issues of national security and foreign policy implicating sensitive intelligence sources and methods.”
Biden stored the materials in his garage, office and basement at his Wilmington, Delaware, home.
“However, for the reasons summarized below, we conclude that the evidence does not establish Mr. Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt,” Hur added.
