Why Biden Is Suing the DOJ—and What Trump Has Said About It

Former President Joe Biden is suing the Justice Department in an attempt to block the release of audio recordings and transcripts from private interviews with the ghostwriter of his 2017 memoir.

The lawsuit filed in Washington, D.C.’s federal court Tuesday argues that the DOJ is abandoning “core tenets of American justice” by disclosing what Biden’s legal team describes as the former President’s “private information.”

According to the filing, the DOJ informed Biden that it plans to release the materials on June 15 to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee and right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation, which sued for access to the records under the Freedom of Information Act (FOAI) in 2024.

The foundation sought access to materials used in then-Special Counsel Robert Hur’s 2023 investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents when he served as Vice President between 2009-2017.

Hur opted not to seek charges against the President, characterizing him as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” 

However, Hur did allege in his report that Biden had disclosed some classified information from his notebooks to ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer during interviews for the memoir. Biden vehemently denied this.

When the Heritage Foundation initially sued the DOJ seeking the materials from Hur’s investigation, the department defended withholding the items, saying it “would constitute a severe invasion of privacy” to release them.

Biden’s attorney Amy Jeffress argues in the new lawsuit that the DOJ under President Donald Trump “reversed” its previous position that the materials were exempt from disclosure in early 2026, “without any formal explanation.”

“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’s spokesperson TJ Ducklo told TIME.

“The DOJ themselves have said these tapes serve no public interest. What’s happening now isn’t about transparency. It’s about politics.”

TIME has reached out to the DOJ and White House for comment.

Biden’s legal team maintains that the recordings and transcripts should remain “exempt from disclosure” under FOIA exemptions and should be permanently barred from ever being released.

“Every American, including a sitting or former Vice President, has a right to privacy in the personal conversations he has within his own home,” Jeffress argues in the lawsuit.

The material includes recordings and transcripts of conversations with Zwonitzer that started in 2016 ahead of the former President’s 2017 memoir titled Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose.

According to the lawsuit, the conversations entailed Biden recounting the “politically consequential and personally painful year of his life that began on Thanksgiving in 2014.”

“That year, President Biden navigated a range of foreign and domestic policy challenges as Vice President and weighed a run for the Presidency in 2016,” details the filing.

At the same time, Biden’s eldest son, Beau, was fighting brain cancer and ultimately passed away in May 2015 at 46 years old. 

“The public and private dimensions of President Biden’s life have always been intertwined, but perhaps never more so than during that difficult year. President Biden and Zwonitzer recorded their conversations for use in writing Promise Me, Dad, and they both understood that they were speaking privately,” the lawsuit states.

On May 12, Biden asked a federal judge to block the release of the materials. In the court filing, the former President’s lawyer accused the DOJ of “forsaking its duty to protect law enforcement files,” arguing that “the law has not changed, but nonetheless, the department has reversed course.”

On May 21, the court “granted intervention as to some but not all of President Biden’s proposed cross-claims” and blocked him from pursuing claims about the committee’s request for the audios and transcripts, according to court records.

Trump, meanwhile, issued a strong rebuke of Biden’s lawsuit Tuesday night, referring to the former Democratic President as “a crooked politician.”

After returning to the White House last year, Trump ordered an investigation into Biden and his aides, accusing the latter of concealing Biden’s “serious cognitive decline” and abusing the power of Presidential signatures “through the use of an autopen.”

Trump described it as one of the “most dangerous” scandals in U.S. history.

Biden referred to the claims as “ridiculous and false,” insisting: “Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency. I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations.”

The former President said the investigation was “nothing more than a distraction by Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans.”