Court Slams the Brakes on Biden's Conversations with Biographer, Keeping Secrets Under Wraps

A federal appeals court just threw a wrench in the Justice Department's plans to hand over redacted transcripts and audio recordings of former President Joe Biden's conversations with his biographer, Mark Zwonitzer. This legal showdown centers on discussions that took place around a decade ago.

A trio of judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit slapped an administrative injunction on the release, halting it for 10 days. This order is a temporary measure, set to expire at 11:59 p.m. on July 20, allowing the court time to mull over an emergency motion for an injunction pending appeal.

The contentious recordings date back to 2016 and 2017, when Biden was working on his memoir, "Promise Me, Dad." Interest from the Heritage Foundation surged years later, following an investigation led by former special counsel Robert Hur into Biden's management of sensitive government records post-vice presidency, which wrapped up in 2017 without any charges against him.

The special counsel's report, released in 2024, included references to Biden's chats with Zwonitzer. Hur's findings claimed the recordings revealed Biden's "diminished faculties and faulty memory," describing the conversations as "painfully slow," with Biden struggling to recall events and often having difficulty reading his own notes.

In the wake of Hur's report, the Heritage Foundation launched a public records request for materials that informed specific sections of the report, including those excerpts tied to Zwonitzer's recorded dialogues with Biden.

Initially, the Justice Department withheld the audio tapes and most written transcripts, citing exemptions under the Freedom of Information Act. However, after President Trump returned to power, the department signaled its intent to release the materials to Congress and the Heritage Foundation.

Biden sought to intervene in a lawsuit filed by the Heritage Foundation in 2024 aimed at forcing the release of these transcripts and tapes. A federal judge initially denied Biden's request to block this disclosure last month.

Following that ruling, Judge Dabney Friedrich temporarily halted the Trump administration from releasing the information for three weeks, giving the D.C. Circuit time to deliberate on whether to intervene. That order was set to expire at 5 p.m. Friday.

Biden's legal team argued that making his discussions with Zwonitzer public would be damaging, equating their release to sharing private diary entries or text messages. They contended that these private conversations were never meant for public consumption and were only collected during a criminal investigation that led to no charges.

They further asserted that there was no pressing need for the Heritage Foundation to access this material. "This FOIA action has been pending for nearly two and a half years, and there is no meaningful public interest—let alone one that must be satisfied in the immediate days or weeks—in the disclosure of decade-old conversations of a former President who is now a private citizen," they stated.

Conversely, the Justice Department maintained that public interest demands access to the information that informed Hur's investigation. "Releasing the materials will allow the public to assess the persuasiveness of Hur's determinations," department lawyers argued in court documents.