Oh, Yay - Looks Like We're Going to Get Treated to POTATUS on Tapehttps://hotair.com/tree-hugging-sister/2026/06/19/oh-yay-looks-like-were-going-to-get-treated-to-potatus-on-tape-n3816133It looks as if the public interest in Joe Biden's conversation with his ghostwriter supersedes the Biden family's sincere desire to keep just how compromised the former president was from the public.
The redacted version, of course.
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Besides the obvious - wanting to establish just how hopelessly pudding-brained the former president was by the stage he was being quizzed by Hur - the Heritage Foundation sued under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to get access to tapes of conversations Biden had with the ghostwriter for his biography to further investigate the claims that Biden had mishandled classified information. The recordings POTATUS made with his ghostwriter are all circa 2016-2017, years before his election.
...The dispute over Biden's discussions stems from a Freedom of Information Act request that the Heritage Foundation filed in March 2024. The group sought records that former special counsel Robert Hur relied on to write specific portions of his report on Biden's handling of sensitive government records, which included passages referring to the former president's recorded conversations with Zwonitzer in 2016 and 2017.
The interviews were used for Biden's 2017 memoir, "Promise Me, Dad."
Hur's report referenced the former president's "diminished faculties and faulty memory" shown in Zwonitzer's recordings, and called Biden's recorded conversations with his ghostwriter "painfully slow, with Mr. Biden struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries."
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A federal judge on Friday rejected an effort by former President Joe Biden to block the Justice Department from turning over hours of nearly decade-old audio conversations to the Heritage Foundation.
Biden’s lawyers immediately launched an injunction pending appeal.
But it could mean a major blow for the former president, who in May sued the DOJ to block the release of the recordings. Heritage contends the audio files contain proof that the former president mishandled classified information, which Biden has emphatically denied.
Judge Dabney Friedrich, a Trump appointee, wrote in her ruling that the former president’s privacy concerns “though substantial,” paled in comparison to the significant public interest in the case and were mitigated by extensive redactions undertaken by the DOJ.
Judge Ruling on the Biden Tapes Is a Big Win for Open Governmenthttps://pjmedia.com/david-manney/2026/06/19/judge-ruling-on-the-biden-tapes-is-a-big-win-for-open-government-n4954165President Joe Biden fought to keep the ghostwriter tapes unreachable, and a federal judge just told him no:
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CBS News reports that U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich has denied Biden's request to block the Justice Department from turning over redacted recordings and transcripts of his conversations with biographer Mark Zwonitzer to the Heritage Foundation.
In a 26-page decision, U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich denied Biden's bid to stop the Justice Department from disclosing the material to the Heritage Foundation. The judge said Biden's privacy interests in the case are mitigated by "extensive redactions" by the Justice Department.
The government had agreed to delay the release of the material to the Heritage Foundation until 5 p.m. Friday.
"Biden has not identified any public harm that would arise absent an injunction in this case," Friedrich wrote. "And, as with the Department's FOIA balancing discussed above, the harm to Biden's diminished privacy interest is outweighed by the public's interest in the Zwonitzer materials and FOIA's 'policy of broad disclosure of Government documents in order to ensure an informed citizenry, vital to the functioning of a democratic society.'"
The materials came from 2016 and 2017 interviews used for Biden's memoir, Promise Me, Dad, and were later collected during Robert Hur's classified documents investigation.
The ruling is a win for open government because the public has lived with years of claims about Biden's condition and very little hard evidence. Hur, a special counsel, didn't recommend charges against Biden over the classified documents. His report still raised serious questions about Biden's memory, recall, and ability to explain key events.
To some degree, this will extend the visible-observed history of LIEden's mental state/capacity by several years.
However, the main focus of the Heritage Foundation's FOIA is LIEden's illegal retention - and possible use in the
2016-2017 interviews - of classified documents.
