Biden Sues Justice Department to Block Release of Biographer Interview Files

Former President Joe Biden filed a lawsuit Tuesday in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to block the Justice Department from releasing about 70 hours of audio files and transcripts from interviews with his ghostwriter.

The recordings and transcripts come from sessions with Mark Zwonitzer that were used for Biden's 2017 memoir "Promise Me, Dad." The interviews took place in 2016 and 2017. Biden's attorneys have long argued the material is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.

The suit follows three earlier FOIA cases that sought to unseal the files. In one case brought by the Heritage Foundation, Justice Department lawyers told a federal judge earlier this month they planned to release the material, with redactions, to both the committee and the think tank on June 15 unless the court ruled otherwise.

Biden asserted executive privilege over the recordings in 2024 after House Republicans sought access. CBS News has reached out to the Justice Department for comment.

The files were gathered during the special counsel investigation led by Robert Hur into Biden's handling of classified documents. Classified papers were found at Biden's Wilmington, Delaware, home and at his former office at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, D.C., in late 2022 and early 2023.

Hur's February 2024 report concluded that Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after leaving office but found insufficient evidence to support criminal charges. Hur's team interviewed 147 people, including Biden.

After the report, the Justice Department under the Biden administration declined Republican requests to release audio of Biden's interview with Hur, though Axios later published excerpts in May 2025.

Biden's attorneys said in Tuesday's filing that the Justice Department under the Trump administration reversed course. The motion states that in February 2026 the department notified Biden of its intent to release the audio and transcripts to the FOIA plaintiffs without formal explanation.

The Biden probe overlapped with a separate classified documents case involving President Trump. Federal agents searched Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in August 2022 and seized documents with classified markings. Trump was later charged with dozens of counts but the case was dismissed in July 2024 after a judge ruled the special counsel, Jack Smith, had been unlawfully appointed. In February the same judge blocked release of the portion of Smith's report dealing with the alleged mishandling of government documents.