Appeals Court Rejects Biden Bid to Block Release of Ghostwriter Recordings Used in Special Counsel Probe
Former President Joe Biden lost his bid Monday to block the release of audio recordings and transcripts of interviews with his longtime ghostwriter that were used in special counsel Robert Hur’s investigation into Biden’s unlawful hoarding of classified information.
A divided federal appeals court ruled the 46th president’s privacy claims did not outweigh the “substantial” public interest in the material, though it suspended its decision until Aug. 3 to allow the former chief executive to consider additional action.
Following his vice presidency, Biden met multiple times with author Mark Zwonitzer, who ghostwrote Biden’s 2017 memoir “Promise Me, Dad.”
The audio recordings of those interviews became part of Hur’s investigation, with the special counsel noting in his February 2024 report that Biden showed “diminished faculties and faulty memory,” and described the conversations as “painfully slow, with Mr. Biden struggling to remember events.”
Ultimately, Hur declined to bring changes against Biden, in part because he believed the president would present himself to a jury as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” (Read more from “Appeals Court Rejects Biden Bid to Block Release of Ghostwriter Recordings Used in Special Counsel Probe” HERE)
