Former President Joe Biden filed a lawsuit against the Justice Department late Tuesday to prevent the release of audio recordings and transcripts from his private interviews with ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer, conversations that became central to Special Counsel Robert Hur's investigation into Biden's mishandling of classified documents.
The recordings, made at Biden's home in 2016 and 2017 while he worked on his memoir, were swept up during Hur's yearlong probe into how Biden improperly retained classified materials from his years as a senator and vice president. Now Biden wants a federal court to ensure the public never hears them.
The DOJ had reportedly planned to release the files to both Congress and the Heritage Foundation under a Freedom of Information Act request, with a target date of June 15, Just The News reported. Biden's legal team raced to court to stop that from happening.
Biden's attorneys framed the lawsuit as a privacy fight. Their filing argued that releasing the recordings would "constitute an unwarranted invasion of President Biden's privacy." The complaint went further:
"Every American, including a sitting or former Vice President, has a right to privacy in the personal conversations he has within his own home. And when the U.S. Department of Justice obtains that private information through a criminal investigation, the Department bears a particular responsibility to protect it from disclosure."
The lawsuit asks a Washington, D.C., court to declare the House Judiciary Committee's request for the materials "pretextual and invalid" and to permanently bar the DOJ from turning over the recordings, Newsmax reported.
That argument deserves scrutiny. Biden's own Justice Department, under then-Attorney General Merrick Garland, previously claimed these same files were exempt from disclosure under federal public records law. The Biden White House even asserted executive privilege to shield the Hur interview audio from Congress. When the House voted in 2024 to hold Garland in contempt for refusing to hand over the recordings, Democrats defended the stonewalling.
Now that the DOJ under new leadership is prepared to release the materials, Biden has gone to court to keep them locked away. The man who once controlled the department that withheld these files is now suing that same department for agreeing to release them. The reversal speaks for itself.
Special Counsel Robert Hur's 345-page report, the product of a yearlong investigation, examined Biden's retention of classified documents spanning his time in the Senate and as vice president. Hur recommended no criminal charges against the then-81-year-old Biden, stating he found insufficient evidence to successfully prosecute a case in court.
But the report's findings were hardly exonerating. Hur questioned Biden's age and mental competence, observations that landed hard during the 2024 presidential campaign. Transcripts of Biden's interviews with federal prosecutors, released last year, showed he was at times fuzzy about dates and details and said he was unfamiliar with the paper trail for some of the sensitive documents he handled.
Biden insisted he treated classified information seriously. The transcripts suggested otherwise. And that gap between Biden's claims and the documented record is precisely why the audio matters.
As we have previously covered, Biden's legal team has been maneuvering for some time to keep these ghostwriter recordings from reaching the public. The written transcripts are one thing. Audio, with its pauses, confusion, and tone, is something else entirely.
President Trump weighed in late Tuesday on Truth Social, sharing a Just The News article about Biden's lawsuit and calling Biden "A Crooked Politician!!!"
The contrast between how the two classified documents cases were handled has been a sore point for Republicans since Hur's report dropped. House Republicans argued Biden was given a pass by his own Justice Department while Trump faced criminal prosecution. Democrats countered by emphasizing Biden's cooperation with investigators and pointing to the criminal case brought against Trump over documents stored at his Florida estate, materials the National Archives had sought to recover.
But the cooperation argument has always had a hollow ring. Biden cooperated with investigators while his White House simultaneously invoked executive privilege to block Congress from obtaining the very audio that might reveal the full picture. Cooperation with one hand, concealment with the other.
The broader pattern of DOJ being used as a political instrument is not lost on the millions of Americans who watched one former president face felony charges while another walked free with a report that politely noted his failing memory.
Biden's legal team would like this fight to be about abstract privacy principles. But the public interest here is concrete. The Hur investigation dealt with national security, the improper retention of classified documents by a man who served as vice president and then president. The interviews with Zwonitzer, conducted in Biden's home, touched on those classified materials.
Transcripts can be sanitized, edited, and stripped of context. Audio recordings preserve what actually happened in the room. They capture hesitation, confusion, and the cadence of a man discussing sensitive government secrets with his ghostwriter. That is not a private diary entry. It is evidence gathered in a federal investigation into the handling of the nation's secrets.
The AP reported on Biden's lawsuit to stop the release of audio and transcripts tied to the special counsel probe, underscoring the significance of the legal battle now unfolding in Washington.
Meanwhile, the Biden family has shown little interest in addressing questions about the recordings. Hunter Biden recently brushed off questions about the interview tapes when approached in Los Angeles.
This is not the first time these recordings have been at the center of a political confrontation. In 2024, the House voted to hold then-Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over the Hur interview audio. The Biden White House had asserted executive privilege over the recordings, a privilege that, notably, Biden can no longer claim as a former president.
That contempt vote was a serious step. The House determined that Garland was obstructing a legitimate congressional inquiry by withholding evidence. Democrats dismissed the vote as partisan theater. But the underlying question, what is on those recordings that Biden fought so hard to hide?, never went away.
Now, with the DOJ under new leadership and prepared to comply with both congressional requests and FOIA obligations, Biden has shifted from hiding behind executive privilege to hiding behind privacy law. The legal theory changes. The goal stays the same: keep the tapes from the public.
The Washington Examiner detailed Biden's effort to prevent the release, noting the lawsuit's challenge to the House Judiciary Committee's request for the materials.
Several questions hang over this case. The specific court venue and case number for Biden's lawsuit have not been publicly detailed. It remains unclear whether Biden's attorneys sought a temporary restraining order to block the June 15 release or filed for a preliminary injunction on a longer timeline. No ruling has been issued.
The substance of the recordings themselves, what Biden told Zwonitzer about classified materials, how he described his handling of sensitive documents, and whether the audio reveals more than the already-damaging transcripts, remains unknown to the public. That is, of course, exactly how Biden wants it.
The dispute also raises questions about the DOJ's own reversal. Under Garland, the department fought to keep these files sealed and backed the White House's executive privilege claim. Under new leadership, the department moved to release them. The same institution, the same files, opposite conclusions, driven by who sits in the Oval Office. That fact should trouble anyone who wants to believe the Justice Department operates on principle rather than politics, a concern that has been at the center of recent classified documents disputes.
Biden's attorneys have wrapped this lawsuit in the language of personal privacy. But the recordings were not stolen from a therapist's office. They were obtained by a special counsel investigating potential crimes against national security. They were made during interviews about a memoir that Biden published for profit. And they concern classified government documents that belonged not to Joe Biden but to the American people.
When a former president sues to suppress evidence from a federal investigation into his own conduct, the public has every right to ask what he is protecting, his privacy, or his reputation.
The transcripts already showed Biden was fuzzy on dates, unfamiliar with the paper trail, and uncertain about documents he personally handled. If the audio tells the same story the transcripts do, there is no reason to fight this hard. And if the audio tells a worse story, the public deserves to hear it.
A man who spent decades in public life, who ran for president on a promise of transparency, and who published a memoir drawn from these very conversations now wants a federal judge to seal them forever. That tells you more than any recording ever could.
