Newly released Joe Biden tapes reveal what he told ghostwriter about ‘classified’ documents
Former President Joe Biden told his ghostwriter about classified materials years before Special Counsel Robert Hur began investigating his handling of government records, according to newly released audio tapes.
According to BBC, House Republicans released over two hours of recordings from Biden’s interviews with ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer, conducted while they worked on Biden’s 2017 memoir, Promise Me, Dad.
The recordings feature conversations from 2016 and 2017, after Biden left office as vice president. In a February 2017 recording, he stated, “I just found all the classified stuff downstairs.”
Elsewhere in the tapes, Biden told Zwonitzer, “The next thing I have here is, um, this is classified.” In an October 2016 recording, he said, “I have extensive notes over this period of time… They [the White House] didn’t know I have this.”
In 2024, Hur concluded that Biden improperly retained government records but did not recommend criminal charges. Hur wrote that a jury might view Biden as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
Biden’s spokesman, TJ Ducklo, criticized the release of the recordings. “It’s wrong, and while President Biden disagrees with today’s decision, he also respects the courts and the vital role an independent judiciary plays in a healthy democracy,” Ducklo said. He also described the release as “just the latest example of this Administration weaponizing the DOJ for political retribution.”
Fox News reported that Biden’s attorneys spent months attempting to prevent the release of the audio and transcripts. They eventually dropped the lawsuit, and Judge Tanya Chutkan, appointed by President Obama, accepted the voluntary dismissal.
Hur also described portions of the recordings as “painfully slow” and noted that Biden sometimes struggled to recall events.
Jeff Clark, Vice President for Litigation at the Oversight Project, argued that the public should have had access to the recordings sooner.
“We are looking forward to reviewing these tapes that Joe Biden and his administration were allowed to hide for too long. They should show his mental decline as far back as 2016/2017. Yet his Party ran him as President,” Clark said.
In 2023, Time outlined the events leading to Hur’s investigation. The Justice Department reportedly began its review after classified documents from Biden’s vice presidency were found at two locations: a private office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C., and later at his home in Wilmington, Delaware.
At the time, Biden told reporters he “didn’t know what was in the documents” and was “surprised to learn there were any government records that were taken there to that office.”
He also said his team had “cooperated fully” and “immediately” turned the documents over to the National Archives and Records Administration. “I take classified documents, classified information, seriously,” Biden added.