A federal appeals court on Monday rejected former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s effort to stop the Justice Department from releasing tapes and transcripts of interviews he had with his ghostwriter for his 2017 memoir.
In a 2-to-1 ruling, a three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said that Mr. Biden had “not satisfied the stringent requirements for an injunction” to prevent the release of the tapes. But the court said the decision would not take effect until Aug. 3 to allow Mr. Biden time to appeal.
Mr. Biden filed a lawsuit in May in an attempt to block the Justice Department from releasing the recordings to the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank. The interviews between himself and Mark Zwonitzer, who ghostwrote his book “Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship and Purpose,” came into the Justice Department’s possession as part of a special counsel investigation into whether Mr. Biden had improperly retained classified materials from his earlier term as vice president.
Mr. Biden’s lawyers argued that the recordings were always intended to stay private. They had been saved on a hard drive Mr. Zwonitzer turned over to the special counsel, Robert K. Hur, as part of his investigation. Mr. Hur’s inquiry ended in 2024 without charges being filed, though his report suggested that Mr. Biden had “willfully” retained classified materials despite there not being enough evidence to prove he had.
Mr. Biden came across in the special counsel interviews as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” Mr. Hur wrote in his report.
During the Biden administration, the Justice Department resisted the Heritage Foundation’s efforts to compel the release of the tapes, arguing they were exempt from disclosure. The Trump administration did not reverse course until February 2026, according to the appeals court ruling.
In the ruling, Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan and Judge Gregory G. Katsas stated that Mr. Biden was unlikely to succeed on the merits of his argument, as the Justice Department’s redactions had satisfied his privacy concerns.
“We recognize that he has a personal privacy interest in his conversations with his writing partner in his home,” the majority opinion stated. The redactions, it added, “meaningfully narrow the requested disclosure’s incursion on that interest.”
In dissent, Judge Florence Y. Pan argued that the disclosure of even the redacted materials could harm Mr. Biden, who “presumably had editorial control over the contents of the book and could decide what information ultimately would be made public,” and had no expectations private recordings would someday be released.
“Moreover, Biden deserves special solicitude as the target of an investigation who ultimately was not charged with any crime,” Ms. Pan continued.
