A federal appeals court has denied former President Joe Biden’s emergency bid to block the Justice Department from releasing audio recordings and transcripts of interviews he gave a memoir ghostwriter. The court paused the effect of its decision until August 3 as Biden considers further appeals.
A divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit late Monday denied former President Joe Biden’s request for an injunction that would have stopped the release of audio recordings and transcripts from interviews he gave to memoir ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer.
The panel suspended the effect of its decision until Aug. 3, giving Biden time to seek additional relief.
The materials at issue stem from interviews Zwonitzer conducted with Biden in 2016 and 2017 while working on Biden’s memoir "Promise Me, Dad" and also relate to Zwonitzer’s work on an earlier Biden memoir, "Promises to Keep." Federal investigators later sought the recordings as part of Special Counsel Robert K. Hur’s investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents, and Hur’s 2024 report cited the ghostwriter interviews as relevant to Biden’s memory and presentation.
The release effort is being pursued through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by The Heritage Foundation and its Oversight Project, which has argued the public has a strong interest in the underlying records referenced in Hur’s report.
In a statement carried by The Daily Wire, the Oversight Project said, "The American people deserve to know who was really running the White House" during Biden’s presidency, and identified Jeff Clark as its vice president of litigation.
Unless Biden wins a further court order, the government could provide the recordings and transcripts once the court’s temporary pause expires on Aug. 3.
