More than 70 hours of audio recordings from interviews President Joe Biden conducted with his memoir ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer, have been released to the public.
The release follows a legal effort by attorneys for Biden to block the recordings, which were obtained by special counsel Robert Hur during his investigation into Biden's handling of classified documents. Biden's legal team abandoned their lawsuit Friday, and a judge accepted their dismissal Monday.
The recordings stem from conversations between Biden and Zwonitzer in 2016 and 2017 for Biden's book "Promise Me, Dad." The Oversight Project, an organization led by former Heritage Foundation employee Mike Howell, pursued the release of the materials for over two years through Freedom of Information Act requests.
According to the Oversight Project, the recordings capture Biden frequently pausing, speaking haltingly, and struggling to recall events. These characteristics align with descriptions in Special Counsel Hur's report, which characterized Biden's conversations as "painfully slow" and noted he was "struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries."
Hur's report stated that Biden's memory "was significantly limited, both during his recorded interviews with the ghostwriter in 2017 and in his interview with our office in 2023." The special counsel's report also noted that Biden could appear to a jury as a "sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory" rather than someone who intentionally violated classified document laws.
Hur declined to pursue criminal charges against Biden, concluding that prosecutors could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Biden willfully retained or disclosed the classified material. The release of these tapes may prompt renewed scrutiny of Hur's decision.