Appeals court deals Biden effort to block release of interview recordings new blow

Joe Biden.

A U.S. appeals court in the District of Columbia rejected former President Joe Biden's effort to prevent the release of dozens of hours of audio recordings and transcripts from a series of interviews conducted by a ghostwriter with a 2-1 ruling issued late Monday evening. 

Biden sued in May to block the release of about 70 hours of interviews recorded in 2016 and 2017 along with the corresponding transcripts, claiming the materials were a matter of personal privacy. With the 2-1 ruling, the divided judges argued the public interest supersedes Biden's right to privacy in this case. 

“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 judges wrote in the ruling, according to The Associated Press. 

The recordings were obtained by then special counsel Robert Hur during his investigation into Biden's handling of classified documents. Hur's investigation ended in 2024 and didn't result in charges against Biden, but largely, Hur said at the time, because of the apparent cognitive decline Biden was going through. The interview recordings are believed to reveal that Biden's mental decline had begun as far back as 2017.

The Biden White House, Democrats and the mainstream media all insisted throughout the 2024 race that Biden remained "sharp as a tack," as he ran for re-election against Trump. Hur's assessment at the time conflicted with the conventional talking points being pushed in Washington and the way Biden came across in interviews his office conducted as well as on the tapes in question factored into his decision to not press charges. 

"We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory," Hur wrote in a report explaining the decision to not bring charges. "It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him -- by then a former president well into his eighties -- of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness."

Of course, the house of cards surrounding Biden's cognitive state came crashing down on June 27, 2024, when Biden delivered a disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump. Biden's debate performance was so bad, his wife, Jill Biden, admitted only recently she thought he was suffering a stroke during the contest. He was pushed out of the race within weeks and replaced on the ticket with Kamala Harris, his vice president.

In May of 2025, it was revealed Biden had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer, which raised even more questions about what his ability to serve a second term would've been. 

The appeals court judges said that their ruling won't go into effect until August 3 to allow Biden time to file another appeal should he choose to do so.