Judge allows release of Biden biographer recordings

A federal judge on Friday cleared the Justice Department to release redacted transcripts and recordings of former President Joe Biden’s conversations with his biographer to the conservative Heritage Foundation, rejecting Biden’s argument that disclosure would invade his privacy.

U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich denied Biden’s request for an injunction in a 26-page decision, finding that the public interest in the material outweighed Biden’s diminished privacy interests, particularly because the Justice Department had made “extensive redactions.” The government had agreed to delay release until 5 p.m. Friday.

“Biden has not identified any public harm that would arise absent an injunction in this case,” Friedrich wrote. She said the public interest in the records and the Freedom of Information Act’s “policy of broad disclosure of Government documents in order to ensure an informed citizenry, vital to the functioning of a democratic society” outweighed the privacy concerns Biden raised.

The dispute centers on conversations Biden recorded in 2016 and 2017 with Mark Zwonitzer, who worked with him on his 2017 memoir, “Promise Me, Dad.” The recordings were obtained by special counsel Robert Hur during his investigation into Biden’s handling of sensitive government records after serving as vice president. The Guardian reported that Hur’s probe examined whether Biden improperly retained classified documents while he was a senator and vice president.

Hur declined to bring charges. His report said the investigation found evidence that Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified material” after his vice presidency, but that the evidence did not establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

The Heritage Foundation filed a Freedom of Information Act request in March 2024 seeking records Hur relied on in portions of his report, including passages about Biden’s recorded conversations with Zwonitzer. Hur’s report referred to Biden’s “diminished faculties and faulty memory” in the recordings and described the conversations as “painfully slow, with Mr. Biden struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries.”

The Justice Department initially withheld the audio recordings and most of the written transcripts, citing FOIA exemptions. Under President Donald Trump, the department said it intended to disclose the material to Congress and the Heritage Foundation. Biden then moved to intervene and sought a preliminary injunction to block release to the Heritage Foundation. He also filed a separate lawsuit last month seeking to block release of the audio files to the House Judiciary Committee; the judge in that case has not ruled.

Biden argued that his conversations with Zwonitzer were private and never intended for broad disclosure. His lawyers wrote in a May filing, “It is not ordinary for the Department to abandon its duty to protect law enforcement records containing sensitive personal information, instead offering them up to political operatives.”

He also objected that the recordings included sensitive personal matters, including discussion of the death of his older son, Beau Biden. Friedrich found that the Justice Department’s redactions removed such material. The materials, she wrote, “contain no mention of highly sensitive topics like illness or death, nor do they mention any non-public persons, including members of Biden’s family.”

“In short, this case presents a confluence of significant public disclosures of prosecutorial decision-making, explicit reliance on particular records, and the statements of a high-profile public figure to support the Department’s decision,” Friedrich wrote.

After the ruling, Biden’s lawyers filed an emergency motion asking Friedrich to block disclosure while they appeal. “This Court should grant an injunction pending appeal to prevent an irreversible change in the status quo,” they wrote. “President Biden’s motion for a preliminary injunction raises serious legal questions, and the disclosure of his private conversations cannot be undone. The resulting damage to his privacy and to weighty law enforcement interests will be permanent.”

The Guardian reported that representatives for Biden and the Justice Department did not immediately comment. Friedrich was nominated by Trump in 2017, according to The Guardian.