Audio of Biden’s Interviews With Ghostwriter Show That He Knew of Classified Information Stored at His Home

The audio of President Biden’s interviews with his ghostwriter in 2016 and 2017 have been released, and they confirm that the then-president was aware that he had classified information stored in his home while he was a private citizen after he left the vice presidency. A special counsel determined during his term in the White House that he was not fit to stand trial for holding on to the documents because he would present himself as an “elderly man with a poor memory.”Mr. Biden had fought to keep the audio of the ghostwriter interviews private, though he relented over the weekend and allowed the recordings to be turned over to the House Judiciary Committee. The panel released more than two hours worth of audio on Monday evening. The recordings cover interviews conducted between Mr. Biden and his ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer, between October 2016 and April 2017. Mr. Zwonitzer helped craft Mr. Biden’s memoir, “Promise Me, Dad,” which was released in November 2017. The more than two hours of audio recordings released by the Judiciary Committee confirm that Mr. Biden was aware that he had in his possession classified information even after he had left the vice presidency, despite his denials that he had kept such information. In one interview dated February 16, 2017 — nearly one month after he had become a private citizen for the first time in nearly 45 years — Mr. Biden admitted that he had “just found all the classified stuff downstairs.”In another audio recording of an interview — this one dated April 24, 2017 — Mr. Biden is heard apparently handing documents to Mr. Zwonitzer and warning him that “some of” the information may be classified, and that Mr. Zwonitzer should “be careful with it.” “I’m not sure, but it’s not marked classified,” Mr. Biden said on the tape as he seemingly rifled through the documents. In early 2024, Special Counsel Robert Hur released a report detailing how he and his team had discovered that the then-president had been keeping classified information in his home between 2017 and 2021 despite his inability to do so as a private citizen. The disclosure of the documents in Mr. Biden’s garage was made after classified documents were found at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. Mr. Trump was indicted for refusing to turn those records over to the federal government despite multiple requests that he do so. In his report, Mr. Hur claimed that Mr. Biden had been confused and often rambled during their interview. He argued in the report that Mr. Biden should not be subject to court proceedings because he would likely present himself as an “elderly man with a poor memory.” Mr. Hur said that that was the same disposition he received from Mr. Biden during their interview.“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,” Mr. Hur wrote at the time. “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.”

Audio of Biden’s Interviews With Ghostwriter Show That He Knew of Classified Information Stored at His Home

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