Former President Joe Biden's legal team is preparing to intervene in a federal lawsuit to prevent the Justice Department from releasing redacted audio recordings and transcripts of his 2017 conversations with a book ghostwriter, recordings that became central to Special Counsel Robert Hur's investigation into Biden's handling of classified documents. A court filing made Friday by Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate laid out the looming confrontation, disclosing that Biden "through counsel, has advised the Department that he intends to seek to intervene to prevent any such disclosures," Fox News Digital reported.
The DOJ itself does not oppose Biden's intervention, but it is moving forward with the release anyway, setting up a Tuesday deadline for Biden's lawyers to respond. If Biden objects before that deadline, the release of roughly 70 hours of redacted recordings could be pushed to June 15, 2026.
The materials at stake are tied to Biden's 2017 sessions with his ghostwriter for "Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose," a memoir about his late son Beau Biden. Those recordings drew scrutiny during Hur's probe into classified documents stored at the Penn Biden Center and in Biden's garage. Hur ultimately declined to prosecute, but his report's characterization of Biden as "a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory" became one of the most politically damaging lines of Biden's presidency.
The filing paints a picture of Biden's legal team dragging its feet for months. Shumate's filing states that after "lengthy negotiation covering several months, at no point seeking to intervene into this case on a timely basis, President Biden has changed position and now seeks to even enjoin release of the portions of transcripts that match exact phrases quoted in the Hur Report."
The Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project, led by Mike Howell, filed the original Freedom of Information Act request that triggered the litigation. The DOJ confirmed in the filing that it "intends to disclose the written transcript and audio recordings at issue in this matter, with redactions, to Congress, pursuant to a request from the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, as well as to Plaintiffs."
But Biden's team appears to want the court to block both releases, to the Heritage Foundation plaintiffs and to Congress. The filing notes that Biden "would need an order barring release in this case and an order enjoining the Department from producing to the House Judiciary Committee all by June 15, 2026."
The frustration in the filing is hard to miss. Shumate wrote that Biden's lead counsel "was unable to provide any information about President Biden's submissions arguing that such discussion was somehow premature (whereas, in reality it is 16 months late) and incredibly indicating that despite the June 15, 2026 production date, the motion to intervene would not be filed until mid-next week." Biden's lawyers then sought up to three additional days after any ruling granting intervention just to propose a schedule.
"That is no way to conduct litigation and smacks of kicking the can down the road to justify delaying the June 15, 2026 production by some form of administrative injunction."
That language came directly from the court filing. The plaintiffs added that they "regret that they are currently unable to assist the Court in this process due to the repeated failure of counsel for President Biden to engage with Plaintiffs on this matter, putting off even initial substantive conversations until next week."
Biden spokesman TJ Ducklo offered a different framing. In a statement to Politico on Sunday, Ducklo said Biden "cooperated fully with special counsel Hur, and agreed to provide audiotapes of conversations with his biographer for a book about his deceased son on the condition that they would not be made public."
Ducklo added: "The DOJ themselves have said these tapes serve no public interest." He then pivoted sharply, arguing that if the current administration were "genuinely committed to transparency, they would release Volume 2 of Special Counsel Jack Smith's report on Donald Trump's own alleged mishandling of classified documents. That report contains information Americans actually deserve to see."
The deflection is notable. Biden's team is not arguing the recordings are inaccurate. They are not disputing their content. The argument is that releasing them is political, while simultaneously demanding the release of a different political document. Democrats have struggled with optics around Biden's fitness since well before the Hur report landed, and this latest maneuver does little to dispel the impression that concealment, not principle, drives the strategy.
Ducklo put it plainly: "What's happening now isn't about transparency. It's about politics." Whether he intended it or not, that line cuts both ways.
Some of the Hur interview audio, from Biden's October 2023 sit-down with the special counsel, has already been released. And what it captured lends weight to the argument that there was good reason Biden's White House fought to keep the recordings under wraps.
Newsmax reported that Axios described the audio as showing Biden "struggling to recall key dates and events, including when Beau Biden died, when Trump was first elected, and when Biden left the vice presidency." Axios noted: "The audio shows what the transcript lacks, the president's dry-whisper voice and the long silences as he struggles to find the right words or dates. Those often were supplied by his attorneys, who acted as caretakers of his memory."
The Biden administration had released the written transcript of the Hur interview but refused to release the audio, asserting executive privilege. That decision looks increasingly calculated in light of what the recordings contain.
The New York Post reported that Biden appeared unable to accurately recall major personal and political dates during the interview, including the year of Beau Biden's death, when Trump was elected, and when he announced his own presidential run, requiring corrections from others in the room. At one point, Biden said: "what month did Beau die? Oh, God, May 30th..."
That audio lends support to Hur's characterization and contradicts the aggressive pushback that Democrats and allied media mounted at the time. White House officials and Democratic leaders criticized Hur for the "elderly man with a poor memory" description, calling it gratuitous and politically motivated. But the recordings tell their own story.
National Review reported that the audio release "further vindicates" Hur's assertions about Biden's mental lapses and memory struggles. Hur's February 2024 report had noted that evidence showed Biden "willfully" retained and disclosed classified materials, but said Biden's likely presentation to a jury as a sympathetic elderly figure made prosecution impractical.
Heritage Foundation's Mike Howell framed the stakes in blunt terms. He told Politico: "These tapes will further prove the massive lie regarding Biden's fitness for office and the fact Biden revealed classified information." Howell added: "The shenanigans aren't over: At the last possible second, and after every delay tactic possible, the autopen is objecting to the American People receiving transparency."
Shumate's filing struck a similar note, stating: "The public deserves to hear the tapes and read the transcripts as redacted by President Donald J. Trump's Department of Justice."
The House Judiciary Committee sent its request for the materials in a March 23, 2026 letter. The DOJ's planned June 15 production date was set in response. Biden's last-minute intervention now threatens to derail that timeline, and the filing makes clear that the plaintiffs view the delay tactics as deliberate.
This is not an isolated episode of Democratic leaders resisting accountability. Virginia Democrats recently refused to back down after a state Supreme Court struck down their redistricting scheme, and the broader pattern of institutional resistance to oversight has become a recurring theme.
What makes the Biden audio fight distinctive is the sheer volume of material at stake, 70 hours of recordings, and the lengths to which Biden's team has gone to prevent release. Months of negotiation. No timely motion to intervene. A last-second reversal. A demand for still more time after the deadline was already set. The filing's language, "16 months late," "no way to conduct litigation," "kicking the can down the road", reads less like legal boilerplate and more like a judge being warned that one side is not operating in good faith.
Even some Democrats have shown a willingness to break with their party's reflexive circling of the wagons. Senator John Fetterman has repeatedly called out his own party's direction, suggesting that the instinct to protect leadership at all costs is not universally shared on the left.
Biden's lawyers face a Tuesday deadline. If they formally object, the recordings and transcripts could be tied up until at least June 15. Biden's motion to intervene reportedly would not be filed until the middle of next week, with a request for three more days after that to propose a schedule, a timeline that the plaintiffs say amounts to manufactured delay.
The DOJ has signaled it will not stand in the way of Biden's intervention but also has not withdrawn its intent to release the materials. The result is a three-way standoff: the Heritage Foundation pushing for disclosure, the DOJ preparing to comply with Congress, and Biden's team scrambling to shut the door before the public hears what is on those tapes.
Americans were told for years that concerns about Biden's mental fitness were overblown, partisan, or manufactured. The transcripts raised questions. The audio answered some of them. Now 70 more hours sit in a vault, and the man on those recordings wants a court order to keep them there.
Transparency, it turns out, is only a value when the tapes say what you want them to say.