Joe Biden will fight the Trump DOJ to prevent the release 70 hours of audiotapes of the former president’s conversations with his ghostwriter.
Last week it was reported that the DOJ was preparing to release damning audio of Biden’s interview with former Special Counsel Robert Hur. The Department is also going to release 2017 audio recordings of conversations with his ghostwriter in which he disclosed classified information.
Joe Biden is expected to intervene, according to Politico. The Judge says Biden has until Tuesday to respond.
“Former President Joe Biden intends to intervene in litigation to block the Trump administration’s effort to release 70 hours of partially redacted audio recordings of interviews he conducted in 2017 with a ghostwriter who worked with Biden on his memoirs, the Justice Department indicated in new court papers,” Politico reported.
“DOJ lawyers told a federal judge in Washington on Friday that they expected Biden would seek to “prevent any such disclosures” of the audio tapes to Congress and to the conservative Heritage Foundation, which sued last year to access the materials,” the outlet reported.
“President 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,” Biden spokesperson TJ Ducklo said in a statement to Politico. “The DOJ themselves have said these tapes serve no public interest.”
“What’s happening now isn’t about transparency. It’s about politics,” Ducklo continued. “If this 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.”
Joe Biden previously asserted executive privilege over the audio recordings related to then-Special Counsel Robert Hur’s investigation into his stolen classified documents scandal.
Republicans have argued that Joe Biden cannot assert executive privilege over the audio since the transcript has already been released.
Then-US Attorney General Merrick Garland classified the audio tapes of Biden’s interview with Hur as “Top Secret” and locked it way in a SCIF.
The Oversight Project vowed to obtain and release Biden’s audio recordings of his conversation with his ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer.
Hellbound and Down 