Former President Joe Biden dropped his lawsuit to block release of roughly 70 hours of audio recordings from memoir interviews with his ghostwriter, a retreat that came days after a federal appeals court ruled the public's interest in the material outweighs Biden's privacy claims.
Biden's lawyers filed a notice of voluntary dismissal in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., on Friday, ending a months-long effort to keep the recordings and transcripts from reaching the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee and the Heritage Foundation. The Hill reported that the move came after a panel of D.C. Circuit judges rejected Biden's petition in a 2-1 ruling earlier in the week.
The dismissal forecloses any further appeals, meaning Biden chose not to take the fight to the Supreme Court. The recordings, made during interviews ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer conducted at Biden's home in 2016 and 2017, are now set for release to congressional investigators and a conservative think tank that sought them through legal channels.
The recordings did not surface through routine political research. They were obtained by Special Counsel Robert Hur during his investigation into Biden's handling of classified documents. Hur's 2024 report described Biden reading classified national security meeting notes "nearly verbatim" to Zwonitzer while working on the memoir, Newsmax reported. That same report portrayed Biden's memory as diminished, a characterization that drew fierce pushback from Biden allies at the time but fed months of public debate about his fitness.
Biden sued the Justice Department in May to prevent the material from being handed over. His lawyers argued in the original complaint that releasing the recordings would "constitute an unwarranted invasion of President Biden's privacy."
The complaint went further, framing the issue in broad terms about government power over private conversations:
"Every American, including a sitting or former Vice President, has a right to privacy in the personal conversations he has within his own home. And when the U.S. Department of Justice obtains that private information through a criminal investigation, the Department bears a particular responsibility to protect it from disclosure."
That argument did not survive appellate review.
On Monday, Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan and Judge Gregory Katsas issued a majority opinion flatly rejecting Biden's bid. They wrote:
"We conclude that any remaining incursion on personal privacy from disclosure of the now-redacted materials likely does not outweigh the public interest in disclosure."
The panel went further, finding that the public has a "weighty" interest in scrutinizing the special counsel's decision not to charge Biden, Breitbart noted. In other words, the court treated the recordings not as a private matter between a memoirist and his ghostwriter, but as material central to understanding a prosecutorial decision that shaped the final stretch of Biden's presidency.
The D.C. Circuit's ruling was not unanimous. Judge Florence Pan, a Biden appointee, dissented. She argued that Biden had demonstrated a "substantial privacy interest" and emphasized the circumstances under which the government obtained the material:
"In my view, Biden has shown a substantial privacy interest. The conversations at issue took place in Biden's home, and the recordings of them were obtained by the government in the course of a criminal investigation that did not lead to an indictment."
Pan's dissent highlights a tension in the case: the investigation produced no charges, yet the recordings it gathered are now headed to congressional investigators and a think tank. Whether that outcome vindicates transparency or sets a troubling precedent for future investigations depends largely on what the tapes reveal.
The recordings carry additional baggage. The Washington Examiner reported that Zwonitzer admitted to erasing several audio files after learning of Hur's investigation, citing concerns about being hacked. That admission raises its own questions about what material may have been lost and why a ghostwriter's first instinct upon hearing about a federal probe was to delete recordings.
Hur's report found that Biden read classified notes from national security meetings to Zwonitzer "nearly verbatim" during their sessions. The memoir interviews, conducted years before Biden entered the White House, now stand as a documented record of how a former vice president handled sensitive material in a private setting, and how that handling attracted the attention of a special counsel.
Biden's broader public struggles have compounded the political damage. The recordings' release will land in an environment where Biden's sharpness and judgment have already been subjects of sustained scrutiny, and where his allies have struggled to control the narrative around his post-presidency.
A Biden spokesperson, TJ Ducklo, told reporters that the former president "disagrees" with the ruling but "respects the courts and the vital role an independent judiciary plays in a healthy democracy," AP News reported.
The full scope of what the recordings contain remains unclear. The court's majority opinion referenced "now-redacted materials," suggesting some content has already been shielded. But the bulk of the audio, roughly 70 hours, is now in line for release to the House Judiciary Committee and the Heritage Foundation, both of which pursued the material through formal legal channels.
Biden's decision not to appeal to the Supreme Court signals that his legal team saw no viable path forward after the circuit court's ruling. The voluntary dismissal is final. There is no procedural mechanism to revive the case.
For the Republican-led Judiciary Committee, the recordings represent a chance to examine firsthand how Biden discussed classified material with a private citizen in an unsecured setting. For the Heritage Foundation, they represent the culmination of a legal fight to pry loose material the government held from a closed investigation.
Biden's lawyers framed the case as a defense of personal privacy. The courts framed it as a matter of public accountability. The public will now get to hear the tapes and decide which framing holds up.
When a former president fights this hard to keep recordings sealed, and loses, the recordings tend to speak for themselves.
