DOJ · US Congress · Donald Trump · Axios
Biden to fight DOJ's release of ghostwriter tapes
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Former President Biden is preparing to ask a court to stop the Trump administration from releasing his conversations with his ghostwriter, tapes that played a central role in a classified-documents investigation.
Key facts
- The tapes go to the heart of Special Counsel Robert Hur's damaging conclusions: that Biden read classified notebook passages aloud to ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer and that the former president's memory
- In a joint status report filed Friday, the Department of Justice said it intended to disclose the redacted transcripts and audio recordings to Congress and to the Heritage Foundation, which sued
- The Heritage Foundation's portion of Friday's filing accused Biden's legal team of stonewalling
- The Justice Department said if Biden files in court by Tuesday, it will agree to hold off on disclosing the materials until June
Summary
The tapes go to the heart of Special Counsel Robert Hur's damaging conclusions: that Biden read classified notebook passages aloud to ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer and that the former president's memory lapses would make it harder to prove he acted willfully. In a joint status report filed Friday, the Department of Justice said it intended to disclose the redacted transcripts and audio recordings to Congress and to the Heritage Foundation, which sued for the material under the Freedom of Information Act. But Biden "intends to seek to intervene to prevent any such disclosures,"the report said. Hur obtained the conversations with Zwonitzer while investigating Biden's handling of classified documents after his vice presidency.