Newly released audio tapes, disclosed by a conservative activist group, appear to show Joe Biden sharing classified information with a biographer and sometimes claiming memory lapses during interviews that occurred before his election to the presidency in 2020.
About three hours of audio and 117 pages of transcripts – with many redactions – were released by the Oversight Project, an arm of the Heritage Foundation, after Biden lost a prolonged legal fight to keep his conversations with his memoir ghostwriter, Mark Lewis Zwonitzer, private.
“They didn’t even know I had this,” Biden told Zwonitzer in October 2016, near the end of his second term as Barack Obama’s vice president, as he talked about sensitive foreign policy matters handled by the administration.
In one 2017 session, after Biden had left the West Wing and before he’d launched his own presidential campaign, he appeared to admit retaining classified information from his time as vice president.
“I just found all the classified stuff downstairs,” Biden said. “I wrote the President a handwritten 40-page memorandum arguing against deploying additional troops to Iraq — I mean, to Afghanistan on the grounds that it wouldn’t matter, that the day we left would be like the day before we arrived.”
The potentially classified information itself is redacted in both the audio and transcripts that the Oversight Project released.
The right-wing group first sued to obtain the tapes after Special Counsel Robert Hur decided in 2024 not to charge Biden for how he handled classified information. Biden cooperated with Hur’s inquiry and told the special prosecutor during his presidency that he did not intentionally mishandle any classified material.
Hur, who obtained the tapes as part of his inquiry, said in announcing his decision that he believed a jury would find Biden a sympathetic figure because of his age and what Hur described as a “poor memory” – a statement that became a flashpoint in public debate about Biden’s age and fitness for the presidency.
Biden was 74 when the interviews began. He was 81 and seeking reelection when Hur released his report in early 2024, though Biden later ended his campaign for a second term after a halting debate performance against Republican Donald Trump.
The tapes contain instances of Biden being unable to recall some dates and details of topics he was discussing with Zwonitzer. Biden also showed a command of many details, recalling meetings and details of conversations referenced in the notes he shared.
At the Oversight Project, Vice President of Litigation Jeff Clark insisted the tapes prove Biden’s decline.
“The tapes have always belonged to the American People, the Oversight Project just delivered them to their rightful owner,” Clark said in a statement. “The knowledge of his deterioration was well-established.”
A Biden spokesman blasted the release as politically motivated.
“President Biden’s conversations for a book a decade ago that discussed his late son are private, and were provided to the Department of Justice on the express condition they stay that way,” said TJ Ducklo. “Reversing course and making them public is just the latest example of this Administration weaponizing the DOJ for political retribution.”
Biden initially sued to stop the Department of Justice from releasing the material, claiming the conversations were private. But he dropped his suit after a divided panel of appeals court judges rejected his bid. Biden could have petitioned the Supreme Court to intervene or asked for a rehearing by the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
In a 2-1 ruling, a three-judge panel from the circuit court found a “substantial” public interest in disclosing the material.
