Biden Plans to Plead with Court to Block DOJ from Releasing Damaging Tapes: Report
Attorneys for former President Joe Biden are planning to try to block the release of recordings from several years ago, in which he may have divulged classified information to a ghostwriter, according to a report.
The conservative Heritage Foundation sued to obtain access to the recordings last year under the Freedom of Information Act, according to a Politico article published on Sunday.
The report noted that Biden’s team is expected to fight to keep the recordings out of the public arena.
The Department of Justice filed a joint status report in district court on Friday that gave Biden a deadline of Tuesday for taking action.
“President Biden, through counsel, has advised the Department that he intends to seek to intervene to prevent any such disclosures,” the report states. “The Department does not oppose intervention. If President Biden does not seek to intervene on or before May 12, the Department will disclose the material shortly thereafter. Otherwise, the Department will disclose the material on June 15.”
The document went on to state that the DOJ intends to release “the written transcript” and audio recordings, “pursuant to a request from the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, as well as to Plaintiffs.”
Biden spokesman TJ Ducklo claimed the case is about “politics” rather than “transparency,” adding, “The DOJ themselves have said these tapes serve no public interest.”
President of Heritage’s Oversight Project One, Mike Howell, who is also one of the plaintiffs in the case, begged to differ.
“These tapes will further prove the massive lie regarding Biden’s fitness for office and the fact Biden revealed classified information,” he told Politico.
And he included a stab at Biden’s notorious use of an autopen to sign crucial documents during his presidency:
“The shenanigans aren’t over: At the last possible second, and after every delay tactic possible, the autopen is objecting to the American People receiving transparency.”
Biden has maintained that he never shared classified info with “Promise Me, Dad” ghostwriter Marc Zwonitzer.
Zwonitzer initially attempted to delete the recordings, but investigators were able to restore them.
The audio recordings in question were obtained by special counsel Robert Hur, who was appointed by former Attorney General Merrick Garland back in 2023.
Hur was tasked with determining if Biden had mishandled classified materials that were in his Delaware home and former office following his tenure as vice president.
Hur’s February 2024 report didn’t recommend criminal charges, despite finding that Biden “willfully retained classified materials after the end of his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.”
The former special counsel told the House Judiciary Committee in 2024 that, “It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him — by then a former president well into his eighties — of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”
Axios reported on the story as well and highlighted how Hur discovered that Biden read journal entries containing classified information “nearly verbatim,” at least three times.
The article also stated that the recordings “capture the former president telling Zwonitzer: ‘I just found all the classified stuff downstairs.'”
This is an especially hot topic, given that Biden’s Justice Department raided President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in 2022, accusing him of the very same crimes.
Shortly thereafter, Trump accused Hur of being hypocritical in a Truth Social post, writing: “WOW! FAKE NEWS CNN, THROUGH A LEAK FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF INJUSTICE, HAS JUST REPORTED THAT NO CHARGES WILL BE FILED IN THE (MUCH BIGGER THAN MINE!!!) CROOKED JOE BIDEN DOCUMENTS CASE. WE ARE LIVING IN A VERY CORRUPT COUNTRY!”
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