Judge allows release of Biden ghostwriter recordings to Heritage Foundation

A federal judge on Friday allowed the Justice Department to release redacted recordings and transcripts of Joe Biden’s conversations with ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer to the Heritage Foundation, keeping alive a fight over how far presidential-related records can be opened to public view. Judge Dabney Friedrich, a Trump appointee on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, said Biden’s privacy interests were substantial but not enough to stop disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

The recordings came from interviews Biden gave for his 2017 memoir, Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose. The Justice Department obtained the material during Special Counsel Robert Hur’s investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents, after Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Hur on Jan. 12, 2023. That inquiry centered on documents found at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, D.C., and at Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, residence. Hur ended the case in February 2024 without charges, but his report drew sharp attention for its comments on Biden’s memory and for citing the Zwonitzer conversations as evidence of “diminished faculties and faulty memory.”

The Heritage Foundation and its employee Mike Howell filed their FOIA lawsuit in March 2024, seeking records Hur relied on for passages describing Biden’s conversations as “painfully slow” and noting that he struggled to remember events and read his own notebook entries. Heritage has argued that the recordings and transcripts matter because they could illuminate how Biden handled classified information, while Biden has maintained that the materials are private. The Justice Department had said it intended to release the records, with redactions, to Heritage and the House Judiciary Committee unless a court blocked the transfer.

Friedrich said her own review found the redacted Zwonitzer materials contained no information about Biden’s family or other private persons. That finding narrowed the privacy argument and left FOIA’s presumption of broad disclosure intact, even as Biden pressed to keep the audio from becoming public.

Biden sued the Justice Department in May 2026 to block the release, and his lawyers sought an injunction pending appeal after Friday’s ruling. The case now marks a clear boundary in the broader records fight: presidential-related material tied to a special counsel inquiry can be disclosed, but only after redactions meant to shield personal details from public view.