WASHINGTON (TNND) — Former President Joe Biden sued the Justice Department on Tuesday in an attempt to block the release of audio recordings and transcripts from interviews connected to the ghostwriter of his 2017 memoir.
The recordings were obtained and scrutinized by special counsel Robert Hur as part of his investigation into Biden’s improper retention of classified documents from his time as a senator and vice president.
The DOJ had previously withheld the materials, arguing they were exempt from disclosure, but Biden’s attorney Amy Jeffress wrote in Tuesday’s lawsuit that “the Department has reversed that position.”
Biden’s attorneys argued the disclosure would “constitute an unwarranted invasion of President Biden’s privacy.”
“Every American, including a sitting or former Vice President, has a right to privacy in the personal conversations he has within his own home,” the lawsuit states. “And when the U.S. Department of Justice obtains that private information through a criminal investigation, the Department bears a particular responsibility to protect it from disclosure.”
Hur’s yearlong investigation resulted in a 345-page report that questioned Biden’s age and mental sharpness but recommended no criminal charges, describing him as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
In 2024, the House voted to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over the audio recordings after the White House asserted executive privilege to shield them from lawmakers.
Transcripts of roughly five hours of Biden’s interviews with federal prosecutors were released that same year. While Biden repeatedly insisted he took classified information seriously, the transcripts showed he was at times unclear about dates and details and unfamiliar with parts of the paper trail surrounding some of the sensitive documents.
Republicans argued Biden was receiving preferential treatment from his own Justice Department and that former President Donald Trump had been unfairly targeted by prosecutors. Democrats, meanwhile, emphasized Biden’s cooperation with investigators and contrasted it with the separate criminal case against Trump, who was accused of refusing to return classified documents requested by the National Archives that were kept at his Florida estate.
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Editor’s note: The Associated Press contributed to this article.
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