Former President Biden sues to block release of audio transcripts regarding special counsel probe
By Easton Martin | May 28, 2026
Former President Joe Biden filed a lawsuit against the Justice Department on Tuesday to block the public release of audio recordings and transcripts from private interviews with his ghostwriter.
The legal action, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeks to prevent the agency from handing over approximately 70 hours of audio files and written records to the House Judiciary Committee and the conservative Heritage Foundation. The Justice Department recently notified Biden of its intention to release the redacted materials on June 15, reversing its previous stance that the records were exempt from disclosure under public records law.
The recordings and transcripts stem from 2016 and 2017 interviews between Biden and ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer during the preparation of Biden’s 2017 memoir, Promise Me, Dad. The files were later obtained by Special Counsel Robert Hur during his yearlong investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents.
In his final 2024 report, Hur concluded that while Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials as a private citizen, criminal charges were not warranted. However, the report noted that Biden had shared some information from his personal notebooks with his ghostwriter, a claim Biden has denied.
