A federal lawsuit filed by Joe Biden is seeking to prevent the release of audio recordings and interview transcripts that documented his memory struggles during sessions with a ghostwriter — material that later proved damaging to his 2024 campaign and contributed to his eventual withdrawal from the race.
The former president sued the Justice Department in a federal court in Washington, D.C., asking it to halt a planned disclosure of the materials to both the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee and the Heritage Foundation, which obtained access through a Freedom of Information Act request.
Without a court order blocking the disclosure, Biden’s legal team warns, the recordings will become public within weeks.
Memoir Recordings at Center of Legal Fight
The disputed recordings capture conversations between Biden and Mark Zwonitzer, the ghostwriter who worked with him on “Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose,” Biden’s 2017 memoir. The sessions took place between 2016 and 2017, a period that included Biden’s final months as vice president under Barack Obama and extended into his time as a private citizen.
Those tapes were later obtained by special counsel Robert Hur during his investigation into Biden’s retention of classified documents. Hur, a Republican appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland, produced a 345-page report in February 2024 concluding that Biden had “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen,” including records related to military and foreign policy in Afghanistan.
Though Hur chose not to file charges, his characterization of the then-81-year-old president as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” sent shockwaves through the political establishment and intensified scrutiny of Biden’s mental fitness. Biden ultimately exited the race and backed Vice President Kamala Harris, who went on to lose to Trump and JD Vance in the general election.
The Hur Report and Its Fallout
Hur’s report described portions of his five-hour interview with Biden, conducted in the days following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, as “painfully slow, with Mr. Biden struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries.” The transcript revealed Biden at times uncertain about dates and details, and admitting he was unfamiliar with the paper trail for some sensitive documents he had handled.
Biden responded forcefully at a February 2024 press conference, saying “My memory is fine” and explaining that his Hur interview occurred while he was “in the middle of handling an international crisis.” White House officials had previously denied the memory lapses that a portion of leaked audio later appeared to confirm.
Republicans used the report to allege Biden was receiving preferential treatment from his own Justice Department. The Republican-controlled House voted in 2024 to hold Garland in contempt of Congress after the White House invoked executive privilege to block lawmakers from obtaining the audio.
A Reversal Inside the Justice Department
For years, the Justice Department defended the recordings as exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. That stance has now shifted under President Trump. According to the complaint filed by Biden attorney Amy Jeffress, the department has reversed that position under the current administration.
The department informed Biden’s lawyers in February 2026 that it planned to turn over the audio and transcripts to the Heritage Foundation, which filed its FOIA request in 2024 seeking the underlying records cited in the most damaging sections of Hur’s report. In May, the Office of the Deputy Attorney General made the decision final: the materials would be released to both the Heritage plaintiffs and Congress with limited redactions.
Biden’s legal team argues the reversal came without formal justification and violates fundamental privacy rights. “President Biden—like every American—has a right to privacy in personal conversations he had within his own home,” the lawsuit states, calling the planned release an “unwarranted invasion of President Biden’s privacy.”
Heritage Foundation Pushed for Records
A Justice Department spokesperson defended the disclosure as necessary transparency. The previous administration, the spokesperson said, attempted to hide audio recordings that demonstrate a significant decline in cognitive abilities. Trump’s Justice Department, the spokesperson added, would work to ensure the American people can hear these recordings and draw their own conclusions about the former president’s mental acuity.
An Echo of the Trump Documents Case
The dispute carries notable irony given Trump’s own classified documents investigation. Special counsel Jack Smith examined Trump’s removal of classified materials to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, a case ultimately dismissed by Judge Aileen Cannon. Trump has repeatedly called Biden a crooked politician over his document retention.
Jeffress noted in the suit that the Zwonitzer interviews covered a period described as “among the most consequential of President Biden’s political life and the most painful of his personal life,” a reference to the death of his son Beau. The lawsuit argues the Justice Department gained access to that deeply personal material only because it conducted a criminal investigation.
Biden, 83, has maintained a modest public schedule since leaving office, most recently delivering remarks at a Chicago tribute for civil rights leader Jesse Jackson in March. Unless a judge intervenes, the recordings he has spent years trying to keep private will be in the hands of his political adversaries in weeks.
