Newly released audio recordings and interview transcripts show former President Joe Biden repeatedly shared classified information with the ghostwriter of his memoir while acknowledging that some of the material was classified, according to records made public Monday after a two-year legal fight.
The Oversight Project released more than 100 pages of transcripts and roughly two hours of audio from Biden's 2016 and 2017 interviews with writer Mark Zwonitzer, who helped write Promise Me, Dad. The release came after Biden dropped his legal challenge to keep the records private. A federal court ruled last week that the public's interest in the materials outweighed the former president's privacy concerns.
The interviews formed part of former Special Counsel Robert Hur's investigation into Biden's handling of classified documents, but until now the public had only seen Hur's written description of those conversations.
The transcripts reveal multiple instances where Biden appeared to recognize he was discussing classified information before lengthy redactions remove portions of the conversation. The 117-page transcript contains numerous blacked-out sections, with many of the redactions attributed to the Department of Defense, the CIA, or the National Security Act.
Some of the removed material involved meetings Biden attended with members of former President Barack Obama's National Security Council. Those meetings included officials who would later serve in Biden's administration, including former Secretary of State Antony Blinken and former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
The interviews also include Biden discussing a handwritten, 40-page memorandum he wrote to Obama in 2009 opposing the deployment of additional troops to Afghanistan.
"The day we left would be like the day before we arrived," Biden told Zwonitzer while explaining his argument against sending more troops.
Other portions of the interviews, including an exchange involving Zwonitzer and an unidentified male speaker, remain heavily redacted.
The accompanying audio provides additional context that isn't obvious from the transcripts alone. Throughout the recordings, conversations abruptly stop before resuming several moments later, corresponding to sections where classified information was removed before release.
According to the Oversight Project, those breaks illustrate the extent of the disclosures.
"The listener shouldn’t overlook the audio redactions because those redactions are intended to cover the disclosure of classified information," the organization said in a news release. "The silence of the redactions loudly demonstrates that Biden knowingly and willfully disclosed classified information to his ghostwriter."
At one point in the recordings, Biden also acknowledged he still possessed documents that the White House did not know remained in his possession.
The recordings also capture moments that are likely to draw renewed attention to questions about Biden's memory years before he became president.
During an April 2017 interview, Biden struggled to recall the name of economist Alan Krueger, one of his advisers.
"I’ll think of his name," Biden said. "I should write the names down because I keep forgetting them."
Other portions of the audio include long pauses as Biden searched for names or dates before continuing the conversation.
Oversight Project President Mike Howell said the newly released recordings provide the public with information that had been unavailable since Hur's investigation.
"The tapes have always belonged to the American People, the Oversight Project just delivered them to their rightful owner," Howell said in a statement.
He argued the recordings also shed light on Biden's condition at the time of the interviews.
"These tapes have so many pauses and 'ums' that it sounds like Biden is buffering like a dial-up Internet connection. The knowledge of his deterioration was well-established," Howell said.
He added, "We can never have a presidential administration run by machinized fiat again. Only one person can be president at a time, and ideally that person should actually win a credible election."
The release is also likely to renew discussion of Hur's investigation into Biden's handling of classified documents.
Hur concluded that Biden violated the law by sharing classified information with Zwonitzer but ultimately declined to recommend criminal charges. In his report, Hur wrote that prosecutors would likely struggle to convince a jury to convict the former president.
Hur's conclusions sparked a political firestorm when they were released. While no charges were recommended, the report described Biden as an elderly man with a poor memory, a characterization the Biden administration and many Democrats dismissed as politically motivated.
Audio from Hur's 2023 interview with Biden, released earlier this year, appeared to reinforce some of those observations. The recordings captured Biden struggling to remember key dates, including the year he left office as vice president, along with occasional slurred speech, muttering and lengthy pauses that were less apparent in the written transcript.
Monday's release adds another layer to that record. Rather than relying solely on Hur's characterization of the interviews, the public can now hear portions of Biden's own conversations as investigators documented them, while the extensive redactions underscore how much of those discussions involved information that remains classified.
