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Judicial Watch announced that the Justice Department has told the court that it will not disclose the audio recordings of special counsel interviews with President Joe Biden in order to protect Biden’s “privacy” interests.
The Biden Justice Department informed Judicial Watch and the court that it would assert Exemptions 6 and 7(C) under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to prevent the release of the two audio recordings of Biden’s interviews with Special Counsel Robert Hur. Exemption 6 applies to “personnel and medical files and similar files” when disclosure of such information “would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” Exemption 7 (C) applies to “records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes,” the disclosure of which “could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”
On March 11, 2024, Judicial Watch filed its FOIA lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the Department of Justice failed to respond to a February 2024 FOIA request for records of all Special Counsel interviews of President Biden (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:24-cv-00700)). A redacted transcript of the Biden interview was released on April 15.
On February 5, 2024, Special Counsel Robert Hur issued the “Report of the Special Counsel on the Investigation Into Unauthorized Removal, Retention, and Disclosure of Classified Documents Discovered at Locations Including the Penn Biden Center and the Delaware Private Residence of President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.”
In the report, Hur called Biden a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” and declined to charge Biden with a “serious felony:”
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. Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. 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.
Prior to the finalization of the report, the White House issued a letter to the Special Counsel’s office attacking the report’s “treatment of President Biden’s memory,” and added “there is ample evidence from your interview that the President did well in answering your questions …”
“This is yet another brazen cover-up. The Biden Justice Department’s political gambit in asserting Joe Biden’s privacy concerns in order to withhold audio of his criminal interviews with the special counsel really takes the cake,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Obviously, the public’s right to know outweighs Joe Biden’s privacy in this widely public case. And, of course, President Biden can simply waive any privacy so the public can fully understand why he was given a pass from criminal prosecution.”
Judicial Watch has several ongoing FOIA lawsuits about Biden’s document scandals and the related unprecedented partisan prosecutorial and judicial abuses of former President Donald J. Trump. (Judicial Watch, 4/30/2024) (Archive)