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Former President Joe Biden has filed a suit against the Justice Department seeking to artifact the merchandise of files related to interviews helium conducted with a biographer that aboriginal became a cardinal portion of a peculiar counsel probe into his handling of classified documents.
Biden's lawsuit filed Tuesday successful U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia seeks to artifact the Justice Department from releasing astir 70 hours of audio files and transcripts to the House Judiciary Committee from interviews with ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer that were utilized for his 2017 memoir "Promise Me, Dad." The interviews were conducted successful 2016 and 2017.
Biden and his attorneys person agelong maintained that the files are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.
The suit comes aft 3 abstracted Freedom of Information Act lawsuits were antecedently filed attempting to unseal them.
In 1 suit involving the Heritage Foundation, a blimpish deliberation tank, attorneys for the Justice Department told a national justice earlier this period they planned to merchandise the files, with redactions, to some the committee and the Heritage Foundation connected June 15 barring a ruling connected the issue.
Mr. Biden asserted enforcement privilege implicit the recordings successful 2024 aft House Republicans attempted to entree them.
CBS News has reached retired to the Justice Department for remark connected the complaint.
In precocious 2022 and aboriginal 2023, classified documents were found at Biden's location successful Wilmington, Delaware, as good arsenic his erstwhile backstage office at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement successful Washington, D.C.
In January 2023, peculiar counsel Robert Hur was selected by past Attorney General Merrick Garland to analyse whether Biden had mishandled delicate documents.
In February 2024, pursuing a year-long probe, Hur released a 345-page report in which helium determined that though "Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials aft his vice presidency erstwhile helium was a backstage citizen," determination was not capable grounds to bring transgression charges against him.
Hur's squad interviewed 147 radical arsenic portion of the investigation, including Biden.
Following Hur's ruling, and during Biden's remaining tenure successful the White House, the Justice Department refused requests from Republican lawmakers to merchandise audio from Biden's interrogation with Hur, though snippets of it were obtained and published by Axios successful May 2025.
In its question Tuesday, Biden's attorneys argued that nether the Trump administration, the Justice Department has "reversed" its presumption connected releasing those files.
"In February 2026, without immoderate ceremonial mentation for its about-face, the Department notified President Biden of its volition to merchandise the audio recordings and transcripts to the plaintiffs successful the FOIA Action," the question reads.
The probe into Mr. Biden overlapped with a separate classified documents investigation into President Trump that began erstwhile the Justice Department searched Mr. Trump's Mar-a-Lago property successful August 2022, seizing White House documents with classified markings.
Mr. Trump was subsequently federally charged with respective twelve counts accusing him of mishandling classified documents, but those charges were dismissed in July 2024 erstwhile a justice determined that the peculiar counsel successful that case, Jack Smith, had been unlawfully appointed. In February, that aforesaid judge blocked the release of the information of Smith's study that addressed Trump's alleged mishandling of delicate authorities documents.
Late Tuesday night, Mr. Trump called Biden a "Crooked Politician" in a Truth Social post in effect to Biden's lawsuit.
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