Former U.S. President Joe Biden sued the U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday, seeking to block the Trump administration from releasing recordings and transcripts of his private interviews with a ghostwriter who helped him write his memoirs, The Washington Post reports, according to UNN.
Details
The lawsuit alleges that the release of the recordings demonstrates the U.S. Department of Justice's abandonment of its "obligations to protect confidential and highly personal law enforcement information."
According to the lawsuit, the U.S. Department of Justice notified Biden of plans on June 15 to provide the materials to a U.S. Congressional committee and a conservative think tank that had filed a public records request.
Biden's conversations with writer Mark Zwonitzer took place in 2016 and 2017, in the years following the death of Biden's son, Beau, from brain cancer, and as he was considering a run for the U.S. presidency.
The U.S. Department of Justice obtained these recordings during a 2023 special counsel investigation, in which former U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland oversaw a review of whether Biden, who served as vice president from 2009 to 2017, had mishandled classified materials in the years leading up to his presidency. Special Counsel Robert Hur, after a thorough investigation, determined that while Biden had been careless with sensitive information, no criminal offenses had been committed.
This year's lawsuit is related to a public records request filed by the conservative Heritage Foundation in 2024 regarding these recorded conversations. They reportedly include Biden reading from notebooks in which he described his activities as president, and which investigators believed contained classified information.
The U.S. Department of Justice under Garland had refused to release the recordings. Now, however, the U.S. Department of Justice has stated it plans to turn over the materials with "limited redactions," according to Biden's lawyers. They argue that the decision to release the materials is "capricious and arbitrary."
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, accuses the U.S. Department of Justice of abruptly reversing course from its Biden-era decision to block the release of the materials.
The lawsuit alleges that the U.S. Department of Justice is violating federal privacy laws and using what Biden's lawyers called a sham U.S. Congressional request as a way to circumvent federal laws regarding public records requests.
Biden's lawyers argue that there is no legislative basis for Congress wanting these materials. The House Judiciary Committee has stated it wants the recordings as part of its oversight of the "politicization of the Biden-Garland Department of Justice."
"The materials were compiled long before the special counsel investigation that the committee is purportedly overseeing, and could in no way shed light on the 'politicization of the Biden-Garland Department of Justice' — the committee's stated purpose," the lawsuit states.
Audio of Biden's five-hour interview with Hur leaked to the media last year. Those recordings, the publication writes, appeared to support Hur's assertion that Biden would likely come across as an "elderly man with a poor memory" if a case against him were brought to trial.
White House launches investigation into Biden's use of pen for important documents16.07.25, 09:56