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By Dan Gooding and Gabe Whisnant
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A federal judge appointed by President Donald Trump denied on Friday former President Joe Biden's bid to block the release of audio recordings and transcripts related to an investigation into his handling of classified documents.
U.S. District Judge Dabney L. Friedrich ruled the public has a right to see key evidence behind the Department of Justice's (DOJ) decision not to charge Biden, even though it includes private conversations with his ghostwriter for his 2017 memoir, because it is central to understanding how prosecutors handled a major investigation.
The ruling means the DOJ can release the materials, with redactions, to The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, and Congress.
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Newsweek has reached out to The Heritage Foundation and Biden's office via email on Friday afternoon for comment.
What the Case Was About
- The Heritage Foundation filed a FOIA request for materials used in special counsel Robert Hur’s investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents.
- The Biden administration's DOJ initially refused to release certain audio recordings and transcripts (interviews with Biden’s ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer), fiercely defending them under FOIA privacy exemptions.
- Following the presidential transition last year, the Trump administration's DOJ reversed course and authorized their release with redactions, prompting Biden to intervene as a private citizen and sue the agency to block transmission, arguing it violated privacy protections.
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Why Judge Denied Biden’s Bid to Block Audio Release
The legal battle over the 70 hours of audio recordings, captured during interviews for Biden's 2017 memoir Promise Me, Dad, centers on the boundary between private citizen reflections and federal law enforcement records.
In a statement last month, Mike Howell, president of Heritage’s Oversight Project, said, per Politico, that the “tapes will further prove the massive lie regarding Biden’s fitness for office and the fact Biden revealed classified information."
Biden’s legal team argued in May that releasing the tapes would constitute an "unwarranted invasion of privacy," noting the conversations took place in his private home and touched on deeply personal topics, including the death of his son, Beau Biden. His attorneys maintained that when the DOJ sweeps private material into a criminal probe, it bears a responsibility to protect it from public disclosure.
“President Biden cooperated fully with Special Counsel Hur, and agreed to provide audiotapes of conversations with his biographer for a book about his deceased son on the condition that they would not be made public,” the former president's spokesperson TJ Ducklo told Newsweek in a previous statement. “The DOJ themselves have said these tapes serve no public interest.”
"What's happening now isn't about transparency. It's about politics," Ducklo said. "If this Administration were genuinely committed to transparency, they would release Volume 2 of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report on Donald Trump's own alleged mishandling of classified documents. That report contains information Americans actually deserve to see."
Earlier this year, a federal judge granted Trump’s request to block the release of a special counsel report on an investigation into Trump’s handling of classified documents. The special counsel in Trump's case, Jack Smith, dropped it as a result of him winning a second term in the White House.
Judge Friedrich, appointed to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by Trump during his first term, found the government’s planned redactions adequately address those privacy concerns. In her ruling, Friedrich wrote Zwonitzer's materials "contain no mention of highly sensitive topics like illness or death, nor do they mention any non-public persons, including members of Biden's family."
Instead, the court ruled the immense public interest in understanding the special counsel's prosecutorial boundaries outweighs the remaining privacy claims. The recordings became central to the public discourse after Hur’s final report in 2024 characterized Biden as a "sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory," a description Democrats blasted as politically motivated.
Hur, a Republican who was appointed to his role as U.S. attorney by Trump, was handpicked to lead the investigation by Biden's Attorney General Merrick Garland, interviewed Biden in 2023 in relation to the discovery of Obama-era sensitive materials at Biden's Delaware home and office he used in Washington, D.C.
Republican lawmakers and conservative advocates have long countered the written transcripts alone are insufficient. They argue the physical audio is necessary to evaluate Hur's conclusions regarding the former president's cognitive pacing, tone, and recollection of events.
Representatives for Biden have asked Friedrich to stay the order and bar the release of the tapes while they file an expedited appeal with the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
What Happens Next
By immediately signaling an intent to seek an expedited appeal with the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, Biden's legal team is setting up a showdown over the limits of a former president’s personal privacy rights.
Biden's attorneys could file an emergency administrative stay to freeze Judge Friedrich’s order. If granted, the stay would block the DOJ from transferring any files while the appellate court reviews the broader merits of the privacy arguments.
If the D.C. Circuit declines to intervene, it could create a fast-moving precedent regarding how private conversations swept up in federal investigations are handled under FOIA.
For now, the timing remains fluid. While Friedrich's ruling clears a major legal hurdle for the Trump administration's DOJ to begin processing the files for distribution, the looming appellate challenge means the public release of the tapes could still be paused by a higher court within days.
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