Judge Clears Release of Biden-Hur Ghostwriter Tapes

Judge Clears Release of Biden-Hur Ghostwriter Tapes

Last month, we reported that former President Joe Biden planned to fight the DOJ’s release of more than 70 hours of recordings with ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer, material that became part of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s classified-documents investigation. 

That effort suffered a major setback Friday when U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich denied Biden’s request for a preliminary injunction blocking disclosure of redacted transcripts and audio recordings to the Heritage Foundation under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). She later paused the release for three weeks while Biden seeks relief from the D.C. Circuit. 

The dispute stems from recordings Biden made with Zwonitzer while working on his 2017 memoir, Promise Me, Dad. Those recordings were later reviewed during Hur’s investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents after he left the vice presidency. 

As we previously reported, Hur concluded that Biden had “willfully retained classified materials” and had read some classified information to Zwonitzer. Hur ultimately declined to recommend criminal charges. 

In a 26-page opinion issued Friday, Friedrich found that Biden was unlikely to succeed in his challenge to the DOJ’s decision to release the materials.

“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 judge also emphasized the DOJ’s extensive redactions before the planned release. “As now redacted, the Zwonitzer materials contain no information about Biden’s family or other private persons,” Friedrich wrote. 

That point mattered because Biden argued that the recordings captured private conversations never intended for public release. Friedrich concluded that Biden’s privacy interests, while substantial, were reduced by the redactions and outweighed by the public interest in records Hur relied on when explaining his decision not to prosecute.

“In short, this case presents a confluence of significant public disclosures of prosecutorial decision-making, explicit reliance on particular records, and the statements of a high-profile public figure to support the Department’s decision,” Friedrich wrote. 

The opinion notes that Hur’s report cited Biden’s recorded conversations with Zwonitzer as evidence relevant to Biden’s memory and state of mind. Hur described some of the recordings as “painfully slow, with Mr. Biden struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries.”

According to the ruling, the DOJ originally withheld the audio recordings and most of the transcripts under several FOIA exemptions, but later determined that the materials should be disclosed with redactions to both the Heritage Foundation and Congress. 

Biden’s attorneys quickly sought emergency relief after Friedrich’s ruling, arguing that release of the recordings would cause permanent harm because disclosure “cannot be undone.”

“This Court should grant an injunction pending appeal to prevent an irreversible change in the status quo,” Biden’s attorneys argued. “President Biden’s motion for a preliminary injunction raises serious legal questions, and the disclosure of his private conversations cannot be undone.” 

So Biden lost the first round, but the materials remain under wraps for now while the D.C. Circuit considers whether to step in.

A separate Biden lawsuit seeking to block release of the recordings and transcripts to the House Judiciary Committee remains pending.

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