The Department of Justice (DOJ) has less than two weeks to decide whether to release audio from an interview widely credited with driving former President Joe Biden’s decision to exit the 2024 presidential race.
A Washington, D.C. court gave the Trump administration until May 20 to state how it will respond to a lawsuit seeking to uncover an October 2023 recording from the DOJ’s investigation of Biden’s handling of classified documents. The tape featured a talk between the former president and former Special Counsel Robert Hur, who decided not to prosecute Biden because he was “an elderly man with a poor memory,” and several organizations have been pressing the DOJ for its release.
“The audio recording will lend additional answers to a fundamental question that the country has been grappling with, [which] is: Who was running the country for the last few years?” Kyle Brosnan, vice president of legal at the Oversight Project, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The Oversight Project, then the Heritage Foundation’s investigative arm, first sued in March 2024 for the tape’s release under the Freedom of Information Act, followed by Judicial Watch days later. CNN filed its own lawsuit for the recording in April 2024 and was later joined by twelve other news organizations before they and the conservative plaintiffs were consolidated into one case. CNN did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Judicial Watch Senior Attorney Michael Bekesha told the DCNF that “the American public as a whole is interested in” the audio because it would determine “how the president sounded” and “how he answered questions.”
The White House is now “considering” letting the public hear the tape, a source familiar told the DCNF. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt previously told Daily Caller White House Correspondent Reagan Reese that “the American people would be quite interested to hear that tape” when asked for an update on its possible release.
Daily Caller White House Correspondent @reaganreese_: “Is the White House considering releasing the audio of Biden’s interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur to the public, which [Biden] had previously blocked?”
LEAVITT: “I think the American people would be quite interested to… pic.twitter.com/JnBgtIKHry
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) April 8, 2025
The Oversight Project is still litigating the case despite transitioning to become a separate entity from the Heritage Foundation, Brosnan told the DCNF.
“This isn’t a partisan dispute,” Brosnan told the DCNF. “Regardless of who you voted for in the last election or what your political leanings are, it is vitally important to understand and trust and believe that the president is mentally capable of doing the job,” he added.
The DOJ did not respond to a request for comment.
The agency released a written transcript of Hur’s interview at Congress’ request in March 2024, revealing the then-80-year-old Biden’s gaffes, such as forgetting what year his son died and when President Donald Trump was first elected, as well as occasional stuttering.
The Biden administration appointed Hur as special counsel in January 2023 to investigate his handling of classified documents after batches of them were found at his private residence. Hur determined at the end of the probe that “Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency” in violation of federal law.
The former special counsel’s interview — and his conclusion that Biden’s “poor memory” would make him “sympathetic” to a jury — added to public concern about Biden’s mental fitness before he dropped out of the 2024 presidential race in July.
The two conservative groups suing, however, maintain that the transcript may not tell the whole story. Brosnan and Bekesha noted that some of Biden’s “repeated words or the use of filler words such as ‘um’” were omitted, as Biden’s DOJ stated in a court filing.
Bekesha also pointed to emails Judicial Watch obtained showing that the White House asked a court reporter to edit out instances in which attorneys appeared to answer questions for Biden before he did. The former president also “might have been confused about the name of the Secretary of Defense,” Judicial Watch said at the time, citing the emails.
“The court reporter seemed to think that there were instances where Biden’s attorneys were the one to answer the question and then the president repeated the answer, and the Biden attorneys were saying, ‘That’s not what happened. He just [said] his answer twice,’” Bekesha told the DCNF.
The Biden administration fought to suppress the audio for months, claiming in court that it had “executive privilege” to keep it from the public. Another argument the DOJ made against the tape’s audio release was that the recording “could be improperly altered” by people using “artificial intelligence” and “‘deep fake’ technologies.”
At the Trump DOJ’s request, a judge in February granted an extended deadline of May 20 for the DOJ to decide whether it will continue the fight to prevent the tape’s release.
The House Judiciary Committee also sued for the Hur recording in July 2024, and that case is still pending. A communications official for the committee did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
Brosnan said it’s “a good thing” that media companies “perceived to be left-leaning” jumped into the legal fight.
“It’s important to get this to the American public, and the more allies we have in the fight, the better,” he said.
While staying out of politics publicly since exiting the 2024 race, Biden has made some effort to defend his reputation post-presidency. The former president claimed in a Wednesday interview that it was “hard” to end his bid for reelection because his term was “so successful.”
In a brief statement, a close associate of Biden dismissed any effect the Hur tape could have on how Americans remember him.
“The transcript has been out for more than a year so I’m not sure there’s much new there,” the associate told the DCNF.
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