A Federal Judge Just Cleared the Way for the Biden Tapes — the Audio His DOJ Fought for Years to Bury.

For more than two years, the audio of President Joe Biden (D) talking through his own memory — roughly 70 hours of recorded interviews that special counsel Robert Hur leaned on when he declined to prosecute — sat locked inside the Justice Department. On June 19, 2026, a federal judge ruled the public is entitled to hear it.

U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich (Trump appointee), sitting on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, denied Biden’s request for a preliminary injunction and held that the DOJ may release redacted audio and transcripts of Biden’s interviews with his ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer, to the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project and to Congress. The think tank had sued under the Freedom of Information Act in 2024 after Biden’s own DOJ refused to hand the tapes over.

The win came with a catch. Hours after denying the injunction, Friedrich froze her own ruling, issuing an injunction pending appeal that keeps the tapes under seal — roughly three weeks — while the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals weighs Biden’s challenge. The audio is closer than it has ever been to the public, but it is not out yet.

• ~70 hours — of audio recordings of Biden's interviews with ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer that the ruling clears for release · Source: Newsweek; Washington Examiner
• June 19, 2026 — the date Judge Dabney Friedrich denied Biden's preliminary injunction — then issued an injunction pending appeal hours later · Source: The Hill; Fox News
• 2024 FOIA suit — Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project sued the Biden DOJ for the materials after it declined to charge Biden · Source: Washington Examiner; ABC News
• "Poor memory" — Hur's 2024 report called Biden a 'sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory' · Source: PBS NewsHour; CNN
• D.C. Circuit — the appeals court that will decide whether the tapes are released after Biden's expedited appeal · Source: Fox News; CBS News

Friedrich’s opinion was direct. She found that President Joe Biden (D) was “not likely to succeed” on his claim that his privacy interest outweighed what she called the “significant public interest in the disclosure of the redacted Zwonitzer Materials.” The logic turned on a point Biden’s own DOJ had effectively conceded: Hur expressly relied on these recordings in his public report, including in his decision not to prosecute. Material a special counsel uses to justify not charging a sitting president, the court reasoned, is exactly the kind of record FOIA exists to pry loose.

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“Biden is not likely to succeed in his claim that his privacy interests outweigh the significant public interest in the disclosure of the redacted Zwonitzer Materials.”

U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich — June 19, 2026 ruling

The recordings are not the special counsel’s sit-down with Biden — they are the roughly 70 hours of conversations Biden had with Mark Zwonitzer, the ghostwriter on his 2017 memoir Promise Me, Dad, recorded across 2016 and 2017. They became central to Hur’s probe because Hur cited them throughout his report. He described some of those exchanges as “painfully slow,” with Biden “struggling to remember events” and straining at times to read his own notebook entries. The DOJ had already released written transcripts; what it fought to keep sealed was the sound of Biden saying it.

The withholding has a long history. After Hur’s February 2024 report landed — the one that called Biden a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” — the Biden White House asserted executive privilege over the audio, and the DOJ under then-Attorney General Merrick Garland (D-appointed) refused to release it even as it published the transcripts. Republicans held Garland in contempt over the refusal. The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project sued under FOIA in 2024 and kept pushing. When the Trump-era DOJ signaled in early 2026 that it intended to disclose the recordings, Biden — now a private citizen — went to court to stop it.

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The reactions split cleanly. Mike Howell, who runs Heritage’s Oversight Project, framed the audio as proof of a cover-up: “These tapes will further prove the massive lie regarding Biden’s fitness for office,” he said. Biden’s camp called the whole exercise political. A Biden spokesman, TJ Ducklo, said: “What’s happening now isn’t about transparency. It’s about politics.” Biden’s lawyers argued the recordings captured private conversations in his home about deeply personal matters — including the death of his son Beau — and that releasing them would be “an unwarranted invasion of privacy.”

The reason the tapes did not drop the same afternoon is the stay. Biden’s lawyers argued that if the audio went public, the appeal would be “largely moot” — once privacy is lost, it cannot be restored. Friedrich agreed that argument was strong enough to pause her own order, granting an injunction pending appeal that holds for roughly three weeks while the D.C. Circuit reviews the case. So two things are true at once: the trial court has ruled the public is entitled to the recordings, and the recordings remain sealed for now. Whether they are ever heard depends on the appellate panel.

The fight over these recordings was never really about a memoir. It was about whether the public gets to hear, in his own voice, the evidence a special counsel used to explain why he would not charge a sitting president — evidence that turned on Biden’s memory. Biden’s own DOJ withheld it; a Trump-appointed judge has now ruled it should come out. The stay buys an appeal, and the D.C. Circuit could still rule the privacy interest wins. But on the merits, the trial court has said what transparency advocates argued for two years: when the government cites a recording to justify a charging decision about the most powerful person in the country, the people are entitled to hear it. We’ll track the appeal and update if and when the audio is released.

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Last updated June 21, 2026