Appeals court temporarily blocks release of Biden-Hur interview tapes

An appeals court on Friday temporarily blocked the Justice Department from releasing audio recordings of former President Joe Biden’s interviews with his ghostwriter, granting a 10-day administrative pause while it considers Biden’s emergency appeal.

A three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, comprised of Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan, Judge Gregory Katsas, and Judge Florence Pan, ordered the DOJ not to release the contested recordings to the Heritage Foundation and its former Oversight Project director, Mike Howell, until 11:59 p.m. on July 20.

From l-r., former President Joe Biden, former first lady Jill Biden, former first lady Laura Bush and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on stage during the dedication ceremony for the Obama Presidential Center, Thursday, June 18, 2026, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

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The panel explained that the administrative injunction is intended only to preserve the status quo while it reviews Biden’s request for a longer injunction pending appeal and “should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits.”

The order temporarily halts a ruling from U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich, an appointee of President Donald Trump, who last month rejected Biden’s effort to block disclosure of roughly 70 hours of audio recordings that were obtained by the Justice Department during former special counsel Robert Hur’s investigation into the former president’s handling of classified documents.

“We are monitoring the situation and, as always, will do whatever is in the best interest of getting these tapes out to the American people as fast as possible,” Howell told the Washington Examiner. The Oversight Project, previously an extension of the Heritage Foundation, moved to become an independent entity in March last year.

The recordings stem from Biden’s interviews with ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer while the two worked on Biden’s 2017 memoir, Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose. The DOJ later obtained the recordings during Hur’s investigation into whether Biden improperly retained and disclosed classified information after serving as vice president.

The Heritage Foundation first sought the recordings through a Freedom of Information Act request in April 2024. Although the Biden administration declined to release them, the Trump administration informed the conservative group earlier this year that it intended to reverse that position, prompting Biden to sue the Justice Department to prevent disclosure.

When the Trump administration in February indicated its intent to reverse a Biden-era DOJ hold on the tapes, the former president filed his own lawsuit contesting the move. He argued the recordings captured private conversations inside his home and that he retained a privacy interest in them despite their use in a federal criminal investigation.

Friedrich rejected that argument in a June ruling, finding that the recordings had already been heavily redacted and “contain no information about Biden’s family or other private persons.”

“The harm to Biden’s diminished privacy interest is outweighed by the public’s interest in the Zwonitzer materials and FOIA’s policy of broad disclosure of Government documents,” Friedrich wrote.

The Heritage Foundation has argued the recordings are of significant public interest because they could shed additional light on Hur’s decision not to prosecute Biden.

Hur’s February 2024 report concluded that Biden had willfully retained and disclosed classified information after leaving the vice presidency, including by reading classified material aloud to Zwonitzer during work on the memoir.

JUDGE ALLOWS DOJ TO RELEASE BIDEN INTERVIEW AUDIO TO HERITAGE FOUNDATION

However, Hur ultimately declined to recommend criminal charges, concluding prosecutors would likely be unable to prove Biden’s intent beyond a reasonable doubt and that a jury would probably view him as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” a comment that tore into Democrats’ claims at the time that Biden was a cogent president capable of leading the country. Biden later bowed out of the 2024 presidential race in July, weeks after his infamously poor debate performance against Trump.

The D.C. Circuit is expected to decide before July 20 whether Biden is entitled to a longer injunction while his appeal proceeds.