A federal appeals court on Monday denied former President Joe Biden’s appeal to block the release of audio recordings and transcripts of conversations he had a decade ago with the ghostwriter of his memoir.
In a 2-1 decision by the D.C. Circuit, the majority ruled that public interest in the contents was “substantial.” The court suspended its decision until Aug. 3 to allow Biden to consider an appeal.
The conversations between Biden and his writing partner Mark Zwonitzer were held in 2016 and 2017 after Biden finished his term as vice president in the Obama administration. The recordings and transcript were gathered in preparation for Biden’s 2017 memoir and came into the possession of the Justice Department in 2023 as part of a special counsel investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents during and after his vice presidency.
No charges were brought against Biden as a result of the investigation. The materials, however, became subject to release under the Freedom of Information Act once they were obtained by the Justice Department — even if they were not government records at the time of their creation, court documents said.
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The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, sued for the release of the transcripts and recordings in 2024. Biden’s legal team has maintained that the disclosure would violate his right to privacy.
The Justice Department under the second Trump administration said in February that it intended to release the recordings, which set up a second, separate legal battle after Biden sued in May.
D.C. Circuit Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan, an Obama appointee, and Judge Gregory Katsas, a Trump appointee, said in their opinion on Monday that public interest in the materials, some of which have redactions, outweighs “any remaining incursion on personal privacy.”
“The public has a ‘weighty’ and ‘significant” interest in ‘shining a light’ on the Special Counsel’s investigation of a former Vice President for alleged mishandling and disclosure of classified information,” the opinion said. “When a highly visible investigation of a prominent public figure ends in a decision not to charge, the public has a strong interest in evaluating ‘whether the government had the evidence but nevertheless pulled its punches.’”
Judge Florence Pan, a Biden appointee, wrote in her dissent that Biden had shown substantial privacy interest in withholding the material.
“Even though the conversations were with an author who was helping Biden to write his memoir, Biden presumably had editorial control over the contents of the book and could decide what information ultimately would be made public,” Pan wrote. “He had no expectation that recordings or transcripts of hours of private conversation, across several sessions, would someday be released over his objection.”
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