Former U.S. President Joe Biden has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to block the planned release of audio recordings and transcripts of his private conversations with his biographer from 2016 and 2017. The complaint, filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., states that the DOJ is set to release the materials on June 15 to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee and the conservative Heritage Foundation. The group requested the documents as part of the information used in former Special Counsel Robert Hur's 2023 investigation into Biden's handling of classified documents.
The lawsuit argues that the committee's request abuses the process to circumvent provisions of the Freedom of Information Act that limit the release of such information. Biden's legal team is asking the court to declare the committee's request "not valid" and "pretextual," and to permanently bar the release of the recordings. Meanwhile, a DOJ spokesperson stated that the agency wants to release the recordings so the public can hear their content, which they claim shows the former president's mental condition. "We will fight to ensure the American people can hear these recordings and draw their own conclusions," the DOJ spokesperson said.
Biden's camp strongly denies the allegations, asserting that the recordings were provided on the condition that they would not be released publicly. TJ Ducklo, a spokesperson for Biden, said the former president already cooperated with Hur's investigation and stressed that this is not just a matter of transparency but of politics. The recordings are part of the process of writing Biden's memoir "Promise Me, Dad," which discusses his life while his son Beau Biden battled brain cancer. The court previously allowed Biden to intervene in the Heritage Foundation's case against the DOJ, but did not permit him to challenge the U.S. House Judiciary Committee's request.
