Former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. sued the Justice Department late Tuesday in an attempt to block the release of recorded interviews he had with his ghostwriter while drafting his 2017 memoir.
The recordings came into the Justice Department’s possession in 2023, under Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, when a special counsel investigated Mr. Biden over whether he had improperly stored classified materials from his term as vice president. Though the department at the time resisted efforts to publicly disclose those tapes, it has shifted course under Mr. Trump and is expected to turn them over to the House Judiciary Committee on June 15, absent a judge’s intervention.
The inquiry, which concluded in 2024, found that some evidence suggested Mr. Biden had “willfully” retained classified materials, but stated that the facts fell short of proving that he had done so. Still, the report released by the special counsel, Robert K. Hur, portrayed Mr. Biden as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
In the lawsuit, Mr. Biden’s lawyers argued that the request from the Republican-led committee, which has long been investigating the Biden family, “is pretextual, lacks a legitimate legislative purpose, is outside the scope of the committee’s investigative powers, and is invalid and unenforceable.”
“Every American, including a sitting or former vice president, has a right to privacy in the personal conversations he has within his own home,” the complaint states, adding that when materials are collected during a criminal investigation, “the department bears a particular responsibility to protect it from disclosure.”
In the final years of his vice presidency, Mr. Biden had several conversations with Mark Zwonitzer, his ghostwriter for his book “Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose,” which chronicles his professional and personal struggles after the death of his eldest son, Beau, to brain cancer.
“In reflecting on these events, President Biden and Zwonitzer discussed a range of sensitive topics, including the role that Beau’s battle with cancer played in President Biden’s decision whether to run for president in 2016,” the lawsuit states, noting the two men had always intended for the conversations to remain private. The recordings were later unearthed on a hard drive Mr. Zwonitzer provided to Mr. Hur.
Under Mr. Biden, the Justice Department rebuffed efforts to release the contents or transcripts of Mr. Zwonitzer’s audio recordings, saying in response to a public records request from the right-wing Heritage Foundation that they were exempt from disclosure.
But in early 2026, the Justice Department changed its position. According to Mr. Biden’s lawsuit, the office of the deputy attorney general informed Mr. Biden’s lawyers on Feb. 25 that it planned to give the Heritage Foundation “certain audio recordings and transcripts, with limited redactions.”
On March 19, while Mr. Biden’s lawyers were still going back and forth with the Justice Department about redactions, the deputy attorney general’s office informed Mr. Biden’s lawyers that the Justice Department had received a request from Congress to produce the recordings and transcripts, and that it intended to furnish them, Mr. Biden’s lawsuit states.
“The department ultimately refused to make most of the redactions to the materials that President Biden requested,” Mr. Biden’s lawyers wrote in the suit. “These redactions were necessary to adequately protect the privacy interests of President Biden and third parties.”
Karoun Demirjian is a breaking news reporter for The Times.
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