Judicial Watch announced it received from the US Department of Justice in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit 49 pages of records detailing pressure asserted by Biden White House and Joe Biden’s personal lawyers on Special Counsel Robert Hur regarding the October 2023 interviews of then-President Biden in the criminal investigation into his theft, retention, and disclosure of classified records. Non-disclosure agreements signed by the president’s lawyers are also included in the records.
Judicial Watch filed a July 2024 FOIA lawsuit against the Department of Justice for all communications about the Hur report with the Office of the White House Counsel and Biden’s personal lawyers (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:24-cv-02179)).
Judicial Watch has several ongoing FOIA lawsuits about Biden’s document scandals and the related unprecedented partisan prosecutorial and judicial abuses of former President Donald J. Trump.
In April 2025, Judicial Watch uncovered Justice Department records showing White House staffers suggesting edits to transcripts of President Biden’s interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur regarding his handling of secret documents.
In February 2025, a federal court ordered the Department of Justice to declare whether it intends to continue denying Judicial Watch’s request for the full audio of former President Joe Biden’s interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur. The Trump Justice Department has until May 20, 2025, to report its position on the release of the videotape.
In June 2024, the Biden administration was forced to admit that the transcripts of audio recordings of Biden’s interviews with Special Counsel Hur had been altered and are not accurate.
The new records include an October 18, 2023, letter, just a few days after Hur’s interviews of Biden, from Special Counsel to the President Richard Sauber and Biden’s personal attorney Bob Bauer to Hur. They express concerns about the release of the report:
At our meeting last Friday, we requested that you provide an overview of where matters stand in this case, particularly any remaining questions or concerns we should address. We also asked for the opportunity to discuss your expected report to the Attorney General at the conclusion of the investigation, including time to review it prior to its submission to the Attorney General. You advised us that you were not prepared to engage with these requests at that time but would take them under consideration.
Moreover, to the extent that your report touches in any way upon procedures in this or prior administrations for the handling of sensitive national security information, your report will also be read with intense interest in every foreign capital. It could affect the national security interests of the United States in ways that none of us can anticipate.
An October 31, 2023, email from Sauber to the Special Counsel’s Office documents the repeated efforts by the Biden legal team to review the report before its release. The letter states:
In our October 18 letter to you, we asked to have the opportunity to review and comment on a draft of the “confidential” report that you are required to write under the Special Counsel regulations. We also noted that we would follow up on the subject of the Special Counsel’s “final report” requirement more broadly.
At a minimum, the report should adhere to the kind of product contemplated by the Special Counsel regulations. As discussed, in contrast to the detailed independent counsel reports setting forth a “full and complete” description of their work, the Special Counsel regulations contemplate only that the Special Counsel will “explain[] the prosecution or declination decisions.” … We support your faithful fulfillment of this requirement. But, consistent with the Department’s description of a “limited” and “summary” product, … , the report should be economical. It should include the factual information necessary to the charging decision, but facts or events that are not essential to the decision have no place….
In a December 15, 2023, 2023, letter Sauber and Bauer reiterate the request and also ask for access to the classification review of the materials found and the return of the records of a personal nature to Biden.
Hellbound and Down 