A lawsuit filed on Tuesday by Joe Biden is seeking to halt the Justice Department from turning over audio recordings and transcripts that documented his memory struggles during interviews with his memoir ghostwriter — material that Biden’s legal team says threatens to expose deeply personal conversations from one of the most painful periods of his life.
The case, lodged in federal court in Washington, D.C., takes aim at a planned disclosure of the recordings to both the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee and the conservative Heritage Foundation. Biden’s attorneys contend the release would represent an “unwarranted invasion of President Biden’s privacy” and warn that without a court order, the materials will become public within weeks.
The recordings at the center of the fight document conversations Biden had with Mark Zwonitzer between 2016 and 2017 as the two worked on “Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose,” Biden’s memoir about the death of his son Beau. Zwonitzer served as ghostwriter for the project, which covered a period beginning at Thanksgiving 2014 that the lawsuit describes as “among the most consequential of President Biden’s political life and the most painful of his personal life.” Those tapes, made during and after Biden served as vice president under Barack Obama, were later obtained by special counsel Robert Hur during his probe into Biden’s retention of classified documents.
The Hur Report and Its Fallout
Hur, a Republican appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to serve as special counsel, questioned Biden for five hours in the days following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel. The resulting 345-page report, issued in February 2024, found 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 opted 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 Washington and fueled mounting concerns about Biden’s capacity to serve. Biden withdrew from the presidential race months later and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, who ultimately lost to Trump and JD Vance in the November election.
Biden fought back publicly against Hur’s characterization. At a February 2024 press conference, he insisted “My memory is fine,” pointing out his interview took place as he was “in the middle of handling an international crisis.” A portion of the audio leaked last year, and White House officials had previously denied the memory lapses that the recordings appeared to confirm.
A Reversal Inside the Justice Department
The Justice Department spent years resisting disclosure of the recordings, maintaining they were shielded from release under the Freedom of Information Act. That stance has now evaporated. According to the complaint filed by Biden attorney Amy Jeffress, the department has reversed that position under President Trump.
In February 2026, the department informed Biden’s lawyers it planned to release the audio and transcripts to the plaintiffs in the FOIA lawsuit brought by the Heritage Foundation. The Office of the Deputy Attorney General followed up on May 5 with final notice: the materials, with limited redactions, would be handed over to both the Heritage plaintiffs and Congress.
Jeffress argues in the suit that the reversal arrived without any 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. She emphasized that the Justice Department came into possession of the Zwonitzer material only because it pursued a criminal investigation.
Heritage Foundation Pushed for Records
The Heritage Foundation submitted its FOIA request in 2024, demanding access to the underlying records Hur relied on for the most damaging portions of his report — passages that depicted the interview as “painfully slow, with Mr. Biden struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries.” The transcript also captured Biden at times uncertain about dates and details and confessing unfamiliarity with the paper trail for some sensitive documents he had possessed.
Republicans leveraged the report to contend Biden was receiving preferential treatment from his own Justice Department. In 2024, the Republican-controlled House voted to hold Garland in contempt of Congress after the White House invoked executive privilege to block lawmakers from obtaining the audio.
A Justice Department spokesperson cast the new release plan as a correction. The previous administration, the spokesperson said, tried to hide audio recordings that clearly demonstrate a significant decline in cognitive abilities. Trump’s Justice Department, the spokesperson continued, would fight to ensure the American people could hear these recordings and draw their own conclusions about the former president’s mental acuity.
An Echo of the Trump Documents Case
The dispute plays out against a backdrop thick with irony. Trump was himself the subject of a special counsel investigation by Jack Smith over classified documents taken to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida — a case that was eventually dismissed by Judge Aileen Cannon. Trump has routinely called Biden a corrupt politician in relation to his own handling of classified materials.
Biden, 83, has maintained a modest public schedule since departing the White House, with his most recent appearance coming in March when he delivered remarks at a Chicago tribute for civil rights leader Jesse Jackson. Barring intervention from a judge, the recordings he has fought for years to keep under wraps will land in the possession of his political opponents within weeks.
