Interview tapes Biden fought to keep secret finally released after protracted legal battle

Joe Biden.

About 70 hours of interview tapes recorded in 2016 and 2017 when Joe Biden sat with his ghostwriter as they worked on his memoir were released late Monday, after a protracted legal battle in which the former president sued to keep them secret.

The audio footage was released by the Republican House Committee on the Judiciary, which said it obtained the recordings from acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, and was first reported on by CBS News. The recordings released on Monday total more than two hours and forty-five minutes, and, at times, show that even a decade ago, long before he even ran against President Trump in 2020, Biden's cognitive abilities seemed to be declining. 

Biden fought for years to keep the tapes from being made public, arguing they were private recordings, but an appeals court earlier this month ruled the public interest outweighed any privacy rights that Biden had claimed. The issue became particularly contentious in 2024 when special counsel Robert Hur obtained the recordings as part of an investigation into whether Biden mishandled classified information. Hur decided to not bring charges against the then-president, based on how Biden came across on the tapes: as an "elderly man with a poor memory."

Indeed, Biden appears at points to struggle with his memory, the tapes reveal, and appears to share classified information with the ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer.

"Some of this may be classified … So, be careful. I'm not sure ... It's not marked classified but ..." Biden can be heard saying on the tapes. Elsewhere in the recordings, Biden told Zwonitzer, "The next thing I have here is, um, this is classified ..."

As CBS News notes, no classified material has ever been alleged to have been published in the memoir, Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose, but Biden's handling of the material raises plenty of questions in light of his public comments after Hur declined to charge him. "I did not share classified information. I did not share it with my ghostwriter," Biden said in 2024, according to CBS News.

On the topic of Biden's failing memory, which Democrats and the media insisted was impeccable years later as he was running for re-election against Donald Trump in 2024, signs that it had begun failing in 2017 were emerging, the tapes reveal. At some points Biden admits to being forgetful, and at other points he can be heard telling Zwonitzer that he is confused about their discussions.

Below, see more on the story from CBS News, and visit here to listen to the recordings in their entirety.