Biden Drops Effort to Block Ghostwriter Tapes From Going to House Committee

The move follows a federal appeals court ruling on July 20 that upheld a previous judge’s decision to allow for the release of the materials.

Former President Joe Biden speaks in Chicago on April 15, 2025. Nam Y. Huh/AP Photo

Former President Joe Biden dropped his effort to block the release of audio recording and transcripts from conversations he had with a ghostwriter for his 2017 memoir, according to newly filed court documents on Friday.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) planned to release the materials, which the agency has said proves Biden’s “significant decline” in cognitive abilities as far back as 2016, to the House Judiciary Committee and conservative think tank The Heritage ​Foundation, but the former president sued.

Few details were available in court records about why Biden dropped the effort on Friday, other than the notice of the “voluntary dismissal of this action without prejudice.”

The move follows a federal appeals court ruling on July 20 that upheld a previous judge’s decision to allow for the release of the materials.

“Biden has not shown a likelihood of success on the merits,” the judges said.

The previous judge had stayed her order to allow for Biden to appeal if he chose to do so, but noted the case “involves an unusually strong public interest in the release of law enforcement materials,” which outweighed privacy interest claims Biden made.

Significant public interest came from a special counsel Robert Hur’s years-long investigation into Biden’s alleged mishandling of classified information. He released a 345-page report in February 2024 that found Biden did willfully retain classified materials, but no criminal charges were pursued.

Hur said evidence fell short of beyond a reasonable doubt, although he noted Biden’s “diminished faculties and faulty memory” and that it would be “difficult to convince a jury that they should convict [Biden]—by then a former president well into his eighties—of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”

As part of the special counsel’s investigation, he had obtained recorded conversations Biden had with his ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer, in Biden’s home between 2016 and 2017 for his memoir titled “Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose.”

Biden’s book includes details about why he decided not to run for president in 2016 and his experience dealing with the death of his son, Beau, who passed away in 2015 from brain cancer.

Hur described these as “painfully slow, with Mr. Biden struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries.”

The Heritage Foundation filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the materials Hur relied on for his investigation, but the DOJ—then under Biden—declined to release them because of national security, privacy, and other FOIA exemptions. The group sued in March 2024, and legal proceedings slowly progressed since.

The Epoch Times reached out to Biden and his legal team for comment but did not receive a response.