Justice Department Finds Transcripts of Biden’s Interviews with Ghostwriter after Insisting They Did Not Exist

The Justice Department has discovered transcripts of conversations between Joe Biden and his ghostwriter that DOJ lawyers previously denied having, as the agency continues to stonewall Freedom of Information Act requests and lawsuits demanding documents related to Biden’s disclosure of classified information.

Federal officials said in a court filing Monday that they located transcripts from a portion of the audio recordings of Biden’s conversations with ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer, after telling a judge the month before that special counsel Robert Hur’s office did not have transcripts of the audio. The court filing, submitted as part of a lawsuit brought by the Heritage Foundation, was first reported by Politico and preceded a hearing scheduled for Tuesday morning.

“In the past few days…the Department located six electronic files, consisting of a total of 117 pages, that appeared to be verbatim transcripts of a small subset of the Biden-Zwonitzer audio recordings created for the SCO by a court-reporting service,” DOJ lawyer Cameron Silverberg wrote in the new filing.

The Heritage Foundation and Judicial Watch are partnering with news outlets in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit for the audio tapes and transcripts of Biden’s lengthy two-day interview with Hur during his investigation.

The Biden administration has invoked executive privilege to block the release of the Hur tapes, instead of complying with a congressional subpoena for the audio recordings. House Republicans held Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of congress for withholding the Biden-Hur audio, but the Justice Department will not be prosecuting him for the offense.

Months before Biden, 81, imploded at the first presidential debate, Hur’s report highlighted his noticeable mental decline and memory lapses, an issue that would eventually prompt him not to run for another term.

Once the Justice Department discovered the transcripts, officials contacted an individual with knowledge of Hur’s files, but the person was not available, so they proceeded to contact Hur himself about the transcripts.

Hur confirmed that the identified files were in fact transcripts of a subset of the Biden-Zwonitzer audio recordings, created by a court-reporting service at the SCO’s request. These transcripts were indeed the transcripts referred to in the Hur Report, though they were not cited in any of the Passages in Plaintiffs’ FOIA request,” the court filing reads.

Hur also helped the Justice Department to identify the records he cited for portions of his final report that are covered in the FOIA lawsuit, reversing the DOJ’s decision not to consult with Hur on the records request. The special counsel used the audio recordings of Biden’s interviews with Zwonitzer and Biden’s personal notes related to a memo about Afghanistan as part of his report.

Zwonitzer worked with Biden on two books, and during interviews for the second one, Promise Me, Dad, Hur discovered that Biden disclosed classified information to his ghostwriter when he read his personal notebooks verbatim.

Before the report came out, the White House unsuccessfully pressured Hur into softening his language on Biden’s age, a move that looks even more controversial given the questions about how Biden’s advisers covered up his mental decline over the course of his presidential term.

At the time of Hur’s report, Democrats accused him of being a partisan prosecutor and strongly criticized his findings, although Hur did not recommend criminal charges be brought against Biden. Transcripts released ahead of Hur’s congressional testimony appeared to vindicate his telling of specific moments where Biden’s memory failed him.

The DOJ argued in previous court filings that the possibility artificial intelligence manipulation is another reason not to release the audio recordings, even though decades of Biden’s past interviews are easily available online.

It’s unclear whether Biden’s choice not to seek reelection will change how the Justice Department handles the FOIA lawsuit, considering that the audio of Biden’s interview with Hur will no longer have potentially major political consequences.