Former President Joe Biden’s camp is scrambling to keep a lid on hours of audio recordings tied to the classified documents probe that dogged his presidency — and critics are already asking the obvious question: If there’s nothing damaging on the tapes, why the eleventh-hour legal panic?
According to a new court filing, Biden’s attorneys plan to intervene to stop the Justice Department from releasing redacted transcripts and roughly 70 hours of audio recordings from Biden’s 2017 sit-downs with his ghostwriter for “Promise Me, Dad,” the memoir centered on the death of his son Beau Biden.
Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate revealed in the filing that Biden’s lawyers warned the DOJ they intend to fight disclosure. The department, notably, isn’t standing in the way.
“President Biden, through counsel, has advised the Department that he intends to seek to intervene to prevent any such disclosures,” Shumate wrote. “The Department does not oppose intervention.”
The recordings became part of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s classified documents investigation after federal investigators discovered Biden had retained sensitive government materials after leaving the Obama White House — including documents stored at his Delaware garage and at the Penn Biden Center in Washington.
The legal clash stems from a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Heritage Foundation Oversight Project president Mike Howell, who has spent months pressing for the release of the material. If Biden’s legal team fails to block the disclosure before Tuesday’s deadline, the DOJ could begin handing over both transcripts and recordings shortly afterward. And that possibility appears to have the Biden orbit rattled.
Biden spokesman TJ Ducklo insisted the recordings were never meant for public consumption, arguing the former president only cooperated with Hur under the assumption the tapes would stay private.
“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,” Ducklo told 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, before attempting to redirect attention toward Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Donald Trump.
The tapes aren’t just about classified documents — they’re about the broader questions surrounding Biden’s mental sharpness and fitness for office that exploded into public view during the 2024 campaign and never fully disappeared.
Hur himself famously described Biden as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” language that detonated politically when his report was released earlier this year. Republicans seized on the characterization as confirmation of what voters had already seen in public appearances, halting speeches, and debate stumbles.
Howell made clear he believes the recordings could deepen those concerns.
“These tapes will further prove the massive lie regarding Biden’s fitness for office and the fact Biden revealed classified information,” Howell said. “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.”
That “autopen” jab — a reference to long-running criticism over who was truly running the Biden White House — underscores how politically radioactive the tapes have become before a single minute has even been released.
The DOJ filing also accuses Biden’s legal team of dragging its feet for months before suddenly attempting to slam the brakes on disclosure just before the deadline. “It appears 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,” the filing states.
Shumate’s filing went further, blasting Biden’s attorneys for what the DOJ characterized as deliberate delay tactics designed to push any release well past the court’s current schedule. “That is no way to conduct litigation and smacks of kicking the can down the road,” the filing read.
Meanwhile, House Republicans are also circling. The DOJ confirmed it intends to provide the material — with redactions — to the House Judiciary Committee in response to a congressional request. That raises the prospect that even if Biden temporarily stalls public release through the courts, lawmakers could still end up reviewing the recordings behind closed doors.
The political stakes are obvious. Democrats spent years dismissing concerns about Biden’s age and cognitive decline as partisan attacks or “cheap fakes.” But after Hur’s report, several damaging public appearances, and mounting scrutiny during the final stretch of his presidency, even some allies quietly admitted the issue had become impossible to ignore.
Now the question hanging over Washington is simple: What’s actually on those tapes? If they’re harmless, Biden’s team may have turned them into the ultimate Streisand effect story — generating more attention by trying to suppress them than the recordings ever would have received on their own.
