DOJ locates transcripts of Biden conversations despite previous denials

by Hailey Gomez
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Photo by: Alamy

According to a filing, the Department of Justice (DOJ) located transcripts of Joe Biden’s talks with a biographer that are linked to the criminal investigation into Biden’s handling of classified materials, which they previously denied having.

In a new filing submitted to a federal judge Monday evening, Justice Department lawyer Cameron Silverberg admitted to locating the transcripts of Biden’s interview with writer Mark Zwonitzer in which the two had worked together in writing Biden’s memoir in both 2007 and 2017.

“In the past few days…the Department located six electronic files, consisting of a total of 117 pages, that appeared to be verbatim transcripts of a small subset of the Biden-Zwonitzer audio recordings created for the SCO by a court-reporting service,” the filing said.

Last month, DOJ lawyers overseeing a Freedom of Information case brought forward by the Heritage Foundation told U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich that processing additional audio files, which contained Biden and Zwonitzer conversations, was highly time-consuming. They emphasized that reviewing audio for potential classified material was more difficult as the recordings were up to 70 hours long, Politico reported.

“We don’t have some transcript that’s been created by the special counsel that we can attest to its accuracy,” Silverberg told Friedrich on June 18, according to Politico.

In February, special counsel Robert Hur released his investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents during his time as vice president within the Obama administration. The report quickly received backlash as Hur failed to press further charges despite describing Biden as “a well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” according to Politico.

Since the release of the report, the DOJ has been flooded with Freedom of Information Act requests and lawsuits as the department has refused to hand over audio recordings of Biden’s interview with Hur as Congressional Republicans have demanded them.

While prosecutors have claimed some of the discussions between Biden and Zwonitzer contained classified information, a DOJ policy reportedly barred them from pursuing charges against Biden as they stated they would not have continued because of Biden’s memory and other factors, according to Politico.

The filing additionally reveals that the DOJ had resisted requests from the Heritage Foundation to contact Hur about the materials he relied upon for his reports and instead reached out to an unnamed person involved in Hur’s investigation.

Due to the unnamed person being unavailable at the time, the DOJ then went to Hur, which led to the special counsel acknowledging he had relied upon the Biden-Zwonitzer audio along with a portion of Biden’s handwritten notes over a memo about Afghanistan, the filing says.

Friedrich scheduled a set hearing for the case for Tuesday.

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