Biden Moves to Block Release of 70 Hours of Audio Recordings With Ghostwriterhttps://redstate.com/joesquire/2026/05/10/biden-moves-to-block-release-of-70-hours-of-audio-recordings-with-ghostwriter-n2202199Former President Joe Biden plans to go to court to block the Trump administration from releasing roughly 70 hours of partially redacted audio recordings of his conversations with a ghostwriter, the Justice Department said in new court filings Friday.
DOJ attorneys told U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich that they expected Biden to seek to “prevent any such disclosures” of the recordings to both Congress and the conservative Heritage Foundation, which filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to access the materials. The Justice Department set a Tuesday deadline for Biden to file legal action and agreed to hold off on any release until June 15 if he does.
A spokesperson for Biden confirmed Sunday that the former president plans to fight the release.
“President Biden cooperated fully with Special Counsel Hur, and agreed to provide audiotapes of conversations with his biographer for a book about his deceased son on the condition that they would not be made public,” spokesperson TJ Ducklo said in a statement. “The DOJ themselves have said these tapes serve no public interest.”
What the Audio Is, and Why It Matters
The recordings were gathered by investigators working for Special Counsel Robert Hur, who was appointed by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland in January 2023 to investigate Biden’s handling of classified materials. The probe began after documents turned up at a University of Pennsylvania think tank Biden had been affiliated with post-vice presidency, and later at his Delaware home.
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The recordings DOJ now seeks to release reportedly include sessions in which Biden read aloud from notebooks that officials later determined contained classified entries. According to exchanges cited in Hur’s report, the audio also captures Biden telling Zwonitzer, “I just found all the classified stuff downstairs.”
Biden has repeatedly contested that characterization. “I did not share classified information,” he said in February 2024. “Guarantee you, I did not.”
The recordings and transcripts DOJ plans to make public are expected to be edited for privacy purposes and to remove any underlying classified information before release.
Ghostwriter Attempted to Delete the Recordings
Zwonitzer did not simply hand the recordings over. According to Hur’s report, he moved audio files into his computer’s recycle bin after learning that a special counsel had been appointed. Investigators recovered the recordings, and Zwonitzer was later granted immunity by prosecutors in exchange for his cooperation.
LIEden or whoever is managing his legal affairs is trying to prevent LIEden's classified information hypocrisy from being exposed: his casual misuse of classified information; Trump's
legal custody of classified documents.
