The long-simmering debate over Joe Biden’s cognitive fitness has reignited in a dramatic legal clash, as the former US president has filed a lawsuit against the federal government to stop the planned release of private interview recordings he conducted with his memoir’s ghostwriter. The materials, which have already sparked fierce political controversy over the past two years, have been at the center of a battle between the Biden legal team, the new Trump-era Department of Justice, and congressional Republicans seeking to shed light on what they claim is evidence of significant mental decline.
The interviews in question date back to 2016, when Biden worked with co-writer Mark Zwonitzer to draft his 2017 memoir *Promise Me, Dad*, a reflective work centered on the 2015 death of his elder son Beau Biden. The recordings and transcripts of these conversations were obtained by Special Counsel Robert Hur during his 2023-2024 investigation into Biden’s improper retention of classified documents after he left the vice presidency.
Hur’s final 2024 report, while declining to recommend criminal charges against Biden, included damning observations about the former president’s memory that upended American politics. Citing the ghostwriter interviews, Hur wrote that the exchanges were “painfully slow, with Mr Biden struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries.” The report also noted that Biden referenced personal vice-presidential notes during the interviews, some of which contained classified material, and explicitly pointed to “significant limitations” in Biden’s recollection. The findings triggered a nationwide conversation about Biden’s age and health, intensified after a poor performance in a 2024 general election debate eroded confidence from his own Democratic Party. Ultimately, Biden withdrew his bid for re-election that year.
In the months following the release of Hur’s report, House Republicans leading three congressional impeachment investigations into Biden submitted requests to obtain the full interview records. The Heritage Foundation, a prominent conservative Washington think tank, also launched a parallel legal battle to force the materials into the public domain.
The trajectory of the release shifted dramatically after Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election and took office. The Department of Justice, which previously blocked disclosure of the interviews on privacy grounds during Biden’s presidency, reversed its position and announced plans to release all records by June 15.
In an official statement defending the reversal, Justice Department spokesperson Natalie Baldassarre directly attacked the prior Biden administration’s handling of the materials. “Joe Biden’s Justice Department tried to hide audio recordings that clearly demonstrate a significant decline in his cognitive abilities as far back as 2016,” Baldassarre said. “We will fight to ensure the American people can hear these recordings and draw their own conclusions about the former President’s mental acuity before he sought the presidency.”
Biden’s legal team has pushed back hard against the planned release in their federal lawsuit, arguing that the private conversations between the former president and his ghostwriter are protected under the US Privacy Act. They also accuse the current Justice Department of violating the Administrative Procedure Act, the federal law that sets binding rules for government agency conduct. The lawsuit claims the DOJ is relying on a false legal justification to disclose the sensitive materials, with the explicit improper goal of public exposure of Biden’s private conversations for political gain.