Former President Joe Biden has sued the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) in his quest to block private audio recordings from 2016 and 2017 between him and his biographer.
Filed in Washington, DC, on Tuesday, the lawsuit “comes ahead of the department’s planned June 15 release of the materials to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee and the conservative Heritage Foundation,” per Reuters:
The foundation sought them after they were used as part of then-Special Counsel Robert Hur’s 2023 investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents. Hur declined to bring criminal charges.
The department fought the Heritage Foundation’s 2024 request for the records as exempt from the Freedom of Information Act until President Donald Trump took office, the lawsuit claims. It announced it would be releasing the records in response to the committee’s request, which the lawsuit claims is meant only to skirt federal law barring their release.
“President Biden cooperated fully with Special Counsel Hur, and agreed to provide audiotapes of conversations with his biographer for a book about his deceased son on the condition that they would not be made public,” Biden spokesperson TJ Ducklo said in a statement this month. “The DOJ themselves have said these tapes serve no public interest.”
President Donald Trump responded to the lawsuit on Tuesday night with a post on his Truth Social account, calling his successor and predecessor a “crooked politician.”
Biden recently intervened in the Heritage Foundation’s lawsuit against the Justice Department, and a judge curtailed “his claims concerning the committee’s request for these records,” according to Devidiscourse.
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