DOJ reveals it has Biden transcripts at issue in classified docs case after initial denial

The Justice Department revealed late Monday in a court filing that it does in fact have transcripts of President Biden’s interviews with a biographer after initially having denied possessing the documents. 

While juggling Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests related to former special counsel Robert Hur’s investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents following his departure as vice president in the Obama administration, DOJ attorneys said it would be time-consuming to process audio files into transcripts related to the president’s conversations with biographer Mark Zwonitzer. 

‘We don’t have some transcript that’s been created by the special counsel that we can attest to its accuracy,’ DOJ lawyer Cameron Silverberg told U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich last month. 

That changed Monday evening, when Silverberg told Friedrich in a new court filing that Hur’s office did in fact have transcripts of some of Biden’s conversations with Zwonitzer. The biographer worked with Biden in 2007 and 2017 to compile memoirs, Politico reported. 

‘In the past few days, in the course of processing the portions of the Biden-Zwonitzer audio recordings that the parties agreed to (see June 25, 2024 Joint Status Report at 2-3, ECF No. 20), the Department located six electronic files, consisting of a total of 117 pages, that appeared to be verbatim transcripts of a small subset of the Biden-Zwonitzer audio recordings created for the SCO by a court-reporting service,’ a court filing late Monday evening reviewed by Fox News Digital states. 

The specific FOIA request related to the Biden-Zwonitzer transcripts was filed by the Heritage Foundation. 

The court filing Monday evening also revealed that while fielding the various FOIA requests related to the bombshell Hur report, DOJ officials contacted an unnamed person with knowledge of the transcripts, but the individual was unable to weigh in. After resisting reaching out to Hur directly for information pertaining to what documents he relied upon for his final report, the DOJ did in fact reach out to Hur. 

Hur confirmed the Biden-Zwonitzer transcripts and said he relied on the documents, as well as a note handwritten by Biden related to Afghanistan, for his final report. 

Hur’s report on Biden’s handling of classified materials after his eight years as vice president was released in February, and stated Hur would not recommend criminal charges against Biden for possessing classified materials after his vice presidency, calling Biden ‘a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.’

‘Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone from whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him – by then a former president well into his eighties – of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness,’ Hur wrote in his report. 

The findings sparked widespread outrage that Biden was effectively deemed too cognitively impaired to be charged with a crime yet could still serve as president.

In May, the White House asserted executive privilege over audio and video recordings related to Hur’s investigation, including the interviews between Biden and Zwonitzer. 

‘The audio recordings of your interview and Mr. Zwonitzer’s interview fall within the scope of executive privilege. Production of these recordings to the Committees would raise an unacceptable risk of undermining the Department’s ability to conduct similar high-profile criminal investigations–in particular, investigations where the voluntary cooperation of White House officials is exceedingly important,’ Attorney General Merrick Garland wrote to Biden in a letter obtained by Fox News at the time. 

Silverberg said in his Monday court filing that he will confer with the relevant parties regarding processing the documents for potential release. 

The court filing comes one day after Biden dropped out of the presidential race following mounting pressure from Democrats to bow out and let another candidate take the mantle to run against former President Trump. The pressure was amplified following Biden’s botched debate performance, which opened the floodgates to criticism and concern surrounding the president’s mental fitness and age. 

Vice President Kamala Harris is now the presumptive Democratic nominee for the 2024 election following Biden’s departure from the race.