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Biden Moves to Block DOJ Release of 2017 Ghostwriter Tapes

The challenge could push the Justice Department’s planned disclosure of redacted transcripts plus about 70 hours of audio into June.

Overview

  • In a Friday court filing, the Justice Department said Biden intends to ask a judge to stop disclosure, with a Tuesday deadline that would trigger a pause on any release until June 15 if he files on time.
  • The department says it plans to provide redacted transcripts and recordings to the House Judiciary Committee chair and to the Heritage Foundation, which requested them under the public records law.
  • Heritage says it will fight Biden’s intervention and argues his lawyers waited too long to try to block access.
  • The recordings capture Biden’s 2017 conversations with ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer for his book Promise Me, Dad, which Special Counsel Robert Hur obtained during his classified-documents inquiry.
  • Hur declined to bring charges but wrote that Biden read sensitive notes nearly verbatim and showed memory lapses, sharpening a dispute that pits privacy claims against demands for transparency and congressional oversight.