Joe Biden
Joe Biden, now 83, recorded the interviews in 2016 and 2017 while still holding notes from his time as vice president Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons

Former President Joe Biden dropped his fight to block roughly 70 hours of audio recordings with his ghostwriter, and within days a conservative group released tapes in which he warns that some of his notes 'may be classified.'

Biden's lawyers filed a notice of voluntary dismissal on Friday, ending a two-year legal battle, and a federal judge accepted it on Monday. The Oversight Project, a conservative non-profit linked to the Heritage Foundation, posted the recordings on YouTube the same evening.

Its litigation chief, Jeff Clark, said the Justice Department agreed to hand over the files only after President Donald Trump took office, and that Biden's own lawyers then joined the case to block them until a federal appeals court ruled against the former president on July 20.

'Some of This May Be Classified'

The recordings, made in 2016 and 2017 for Biden's memoir 'Promise Me, Dad,' capture him telling ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer to 'be careful' because material 'may be classified.' At another point he says, 'the next thing I have here is, um, this is classified.' Those passages remain redacted. In an October 2016 session, Biden says he kept notes the White House didn't know about, telling Zwonitzer, 'they didn't know I have this.'

In other passages, Biden describes sensitive meetings to Zwonitzer, referring to 'a big meeting with the CIA and everyone,' a gathering 'down in the Situation Room,' and a session where the Defense Department briefed the president. He is more guarded elsewhere, flagging the 'non-classified part' of a November 2016 discussion while he was still vice president.

Why Robert Hur Declined To Charge

The tapes were cited in special counsel Robert Hur's February 2024 report, which found Biden 'willfully retained and disclosed classified materials' after his vice presidency yet recommended no charges. The audio appears to support Hur's account. He wrote that a jury would probably see Biden as a 'sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,' making a conviction unlikely, and called the 2017 recordings 'painfully slow.'

The Double Standard Question

That reasoning is what critics seize on now. Rank-and-file federal workers and service members have lost security clearances, jobs, or their freedom over far smaller classified-document lapses, and the Oversight Project argues Hur's decision should be re-examined 'from top to bottom.'

Others counter that Hur weighed Biden's full cooperation and the high bar of proving willful intent beyond reasonable doubt, and note that no former president or vice president has been charged for mishandling records from his own administration.

What Biden Said, and What Comes Next

When the Hur report landed, Biden told reporters, 'I did not share classified information. I did not share it with my ghostwriter.' The newly public audio, in which he reads aloud from his own notes, complicates that denial, though nothing shown was ever alleged to appear in the finished book. Questions about his age and memory trailed Biden through his presidency and helped end his 2024 re-election bid.

Biden, now 83, received a $10 million (£7.5 million) advance for the memoir and plans a sequel, 'Promise Me, America,' on 17 November.

For anyone who has held a security clearance, the tapes reopen a question the courts never settled. Do the same rules apply to a former president as to a junior analyst?

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