WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court has turned down former President Joe Biden’s request to stop the release of audio recordings and written transcripts from interviews he gave to a ghostwriter who helped him write his memoirs before he won the presidency.
A three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit voted 2-1 against Biden’s position, but put its ruling on hold until August 3 to give Biden an opportunity to pursue a further appeal.
The majority determined that there is a “substantial” public interest in making the material available, while also noting that certain redactions could help shield some of Biden’s personal privacy. “We conclude that any remaining incursion on personal privacy from disclosure of the now-redacted materials likely does not outweigh the public interest in disclosure,” the court wrote in its opinion.
Mark Zwonitzer, the ghostwriter who collaborated with Biden on two memoirs, conducted the interviews at Biden’s home in 2016 and 2017. Biden’s legal team has argued that the conversations were candid, personal in nature, and were always meant to stay private.
The recordings came into federal hands when special counsel Robert Hur obtained them as part of his investigation into how Biden handled classified documents during his years as a U.S. senator from Delaware and as vice president. After Hur chose not to bring charges against the then-president, Republican members of Congress pushed for access to the recordings.
Biden filed a lawsuit seeking to prevent the Justice Department, under President Donald Trump, from handing over the recordings to Congress and the conservative Heritage Foundation. The department had previously argued that the recordings were not subject to release under public records law.
Biden took his case to the appeals court after U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich ruled in June that the public’s interest in the recordings outweighed Biden’s privacy rights. Friedrich was nominated to the bench by Trump.
The three judges who heard the appeal were D.C. Circuit Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan and Judges Gregory Katsas and Florence Pan. Pan, who was nominated by Biden, disagreed with the majority and filed a dissent. Srinivasan was nominated by President Barack Obama, who selected Biden as his vice president, while Katsas was nominated by Trump.
