A federal appeals court on Friday temporarily blocked the DOJ from releasing 70 hours of Joe Biden’s conversations with his ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer.
Last month, a federal judge cleared the way for the Justice Department to release recordings of Biden’s conversations with his ghostwriter to the Oversight Project.
US District Judge Dabney Friedrich, a Trump appointee, said the redactions were sufficient.
Biden’s lawyers immediately requested an injunction pending appeal.
Last month Judge Friedrich stayed her own order pending appeal and gave the DC Circuit Court of Appeals three weeks to make a decision on whether the DOJ can release Biden’s audiotapes.
On Friday, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the release of the audiotapes to the Oversight Project for 10 days.
CBS News reported:
A federal appeals court temporarily blocked the Justice Department from turning over to a conservative think tank redacted transcripts and audio recordings of conversations former President Joe Biden had with his biographer roughly a decade ago.
A panel of three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed to issue an administrative injunction that stops the release of the material to the Heritage Foundation for 10 days.
The court said in a brief unsigned order that the purpose of its injunction, which expires at 11:59 p.m. on July 20, is to “give the court sufficient opportunity to consider the emergency motion for an injunction pending appeal and should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits of that motion.”
The recordings at issue in the legal fight date back to 2016 and 2017, when Biden sat down with his biographer, Mark Zwonitzer, for his memoir, “Promise Me, Dad.” But they gained interest from the Heritage Foundation several years later following an investigation by former special counsel Robert Hur into Biden’s handling of sensitive government records after his vice presidency, which ended in 2017. The former president was not charged with any crimes stemming from Hur’s investigation.
Robert Hur in February 2024 released a 345-page report on his investigation of the stolen classified documents.
Robert Hur found that Joe Biden “willfully retained” classified information, however, he decided not to charge him. Hur said there is evidence Biden retained classified notebooks, “knowing he was not allowed to do so.”
Biden was not charged even though he willfully retained SCIF-designated classified documents and shared material with his ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer.
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