Former U.S. President Joe Biden is asking a federal court in Washington to stop the public release of audio recordings and transcripts tied to conversations he held with his biographer nearly a decade ago — material that later became part of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s classified documents investigation.
The recordings, captured during discussions for Biden’s 2017 memoir Promise Me, Dad, were obtained by the Justice Department in 2023 while Hur examined Biden’s handling of classified material after leaving office. Hur ultimately chose not to pursue criminal charges.
Now, the dispute has shifted from criminal scrutiny to a battle over privacy and political intent.
A conservative legal fight launched by the Heritage Foundation is at the center of the case. The group sued the Justice Department last year seeking access to records from Hur’s investigation. Included among those records are hours of taped conversations recorded inside Biden’s home while he worked with his biographer.
Under Biden’s administration, the Justice Department resisted releasing the files, arguing that disclosure would amount to a major invasion of privacy. But after Donald Trump returned to office, the department reversed its position and informed the court it plans to hand over the materials to the plaintiffs and Congress by mid-June.
Biden’s legal team responded with an emergency effort to intervene in the case.
In court papers filed Tuesday, Biden’s attorneys argued the government was abandoning long-standing protections surrounding sensitive investigative material. His lawyer, Amy Jeffress, accused the department of discarding “core tenets of American justice” in favor of a politically charged disclosure.
The former president’s camp says the conversations contain deeply personal discussions, including references to his late son Beau Biden’s cancer battle, and were shared under the expectation they would remain private. Biden spokesman TJ Ducklo said the recordings were voluntarily provided to investigators only because confidentiality was expected to be preserved.
“What’s happening now isn’t about transparency,” Ducklo said in a statement. “It’s about politics.”
The Justice Department has not publicly commented on Biden’s filing.
Meanwhile, the Oversight Project — a Heritage-affiliated group pursuing the lawsuit — signaled it intends to fight Biden’s attempt to block release of the material. The organization argued the former president waited too long to intervene and said the public has a right to hear the recordings.
The case adds another layer to the already contentious fallout from Hur’s investigation, which stirred political controversy after the special counsel described Biden as an elderly man with a poor memory, even while declining prosecution.
Biden’s lawyers have dismissed the latest congressional demand for the tapes as a political maneuver disguised as oversight. The department, however, recently told the court it plans to comply with a request from the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee and release the records unless blocked by the judge.
