A lawsuit filed by Joe Biden on Tuesday, May 26, 2026, seeks to halt the Justice Department from disclosing audio recordings and transcripts that documented the former president’s memory struggles during interviews with his ghostwriter — material that played a pivotal role in derailing his 2024 re-election campaign.
The conversations at the center of the legal battle took place between 2016 and 2017 with Mark Zwonitzer, who worked with Biden on his memoir “Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose.” Biden’s attorneys argue the recordings, made during and after his time as vice president under Barack Obama, contain deeply personal discussions captured inside his own home.
Special counsel Robert Hur later obtained the tapes as part of his probe into Biden’s handling of classified materials. Hur, a Republican appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland, questioned Biden for five hours following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel. His 345-page report, issued in February 2024, found that Biden had “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen,” including records related to military and foreign policy matters in Afghanistan.
Though Hur chose not to pursue charges, his characterization of the then-81-year-old president as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” sent shockwaves through the capital and intensified scrutiny of Biden’s ability to serve. Biden later exited the race and backed Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost to Trump and JD Vance in November.
The Hur Report and Its Fallout
Hur’s report included passages describing the interview as “painfully slow, with Mr. Biden struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries.” The transcript revealed Biden occasionally confused dates and details and admitted unfamiliarity with the paper trail surrounding certain sensitive documents he had handled.
Biden mounted a vigorous defense at the time. “My memory is fine,” he declared at a February 2024 press conference, explaining his Hur interview occurred as he was “in the middle of handling an international crisis.” Some audio leaked last year, and White House officials had previously disputed the memory lapses the recordings appeared to validate.
A Reversal Inside the Justice Department
The Justice Department spent years resisting disclosure of the recordings, maintaining they were protected from release under the Freedom of Information Act. That stance has now crumbled. According to the complaint filed by Biden attorney Amy Jeffress, the Department has reversed that position under President Trump.
In February 2026, the department informed Biden’s legal team it planned to turn over the audio and transcripts to the Heritage Foundation, which had filed a FOIA request in 2024 seeking records underlying the most damaging sections of Hur’s report. On May 5, the Office of the Deputy Attorney General issued a final decision: the materials would be released to the Heritage plaintiffs and the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee on June 15, with limited redactions.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., challenges the planned disclosure. Biden’s lawyers contend the reversal came without any formal justification and violates fundamental privacy rights. “President Biden—like every American—has a right to privacy in personal conversations he had within his own home,” the lawsuit states, calling the planned release an “unwarranted invasion of President Biden’s privacy.”
Heritage Foundation Pushed for Records
Republicans embraced the Hur report as evidence that Biden was receiving preferential treatment from his own Justice Department. The Republican-controlled House voted in 2024 to hold Garland in contempt of Congress after the White House invoked executive privilege to block lawmakers from accessing the audio.
A Justice Department spokesperson defended the new disclosure plan as a necessary corrective. The previous administration tried to hide audio recordings that demonstrated a significant decline in cognitive abilities as far back as 2016. Trump’s Justice Department, the spokesperson added, would fight to ensure the American people can hear these recordings and draw their own conclusions about the former president’s mental acuity before he sought the presidency.
An Echo of the Trump Documents Case
The dispute carries a sharp irony. Trump faced his own special counsel investigation by Jack Smith over classified documents taken to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida — a case ultimately dismissed by Judge Aileen Cannon. Trump has repeatedly called Biden a “Crooked Politician” over his document handling.
Jeffress stressed in the suit that the Zwonitzer recordings span the period starting at Thanksgiving 2014 — among the most consequential of President Biden’s political life and the most painful of his personal life, a reference to the death of his son Beau. The lawsuit points out the Justice Department acquired that material only because it launched a criminal investigation.
Biden, 83, has maintained a modest public schedule since departing office, most recently speaking at a Chicago tribute for civil rights leader Jesse Jackson on a recent date. Without court action, the recordings he has fought for years to shield will reach his political opponents within weeks.