Memoir Sessions Trigger Federal Probe

Press microphones at a White House briefing podium — Photo: Maxx-Studio / Shutterstock

Newly released tapes of Joe Biden’s memoir interviews now show a former vice president talking about classified documents and struggling through sensitive conversations that federal investigators later used in a criminal probe.

Story Snapshot

About three hours of audio and lengthy transcripts from Biden’s talks with his ghostwriter are now public after years of legal fighting.
Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report says Biden read classified notes “nearly verbatim” to his ghostwriter on at least three occasions.
The tapes were evidence in Hur’s investigation of Biden’s handling of classified documents, which found serious problems but recommended no charges.
A federal court ruled the public’s right to see the redacted material outweighs Biden’s privacy, raising fresh doubts about how elites treat rules they impose on others.

What the Biden–ghostwriter tapes actually show

New audio and transcripts released by the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project capture Joe Biden in long 2016 and 2017 interviews with ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer for his memoir. The material shows Biden talking through foreign policy, Afghanistan, and his time as vice president, sometimes noting he had sensitive documents at home. In one recorded exchange, he said, “I just found all the classified stuff downstairs,” referring to volumes of notes he kept in his house. Many specific lines are still blacked out, but the structure of the conversations is clear: Biden leaned heavily on notebooks from national security meetings to refresh his memory.

Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report, released in 2024, explains why those interviews mattered so much. Hur found that Biden had saved notebooks from his time as vice president that contained classified information and used them during meetings with Zwonitzer, sometimes reading from them “nearly verbatim” for an hour or more. Hur wrote that Biden sometimes warned his ghostwriter that entries “might be classified” and skipped over some parts, but “at least three times” he read classified notes from national security meetings aloud nearly word for word. Zwonitzer did not have a security clearance, and Biden knew this.

From private memoir sessions to a classified documents investigation

These recordings did not start as a legal problem; they were meant to help Biden write “Promise Me, Dad,” his 2017 memoir about grief and foreign policy. That changed after classified documents were later found at the Penn Biden Center and at Biden’s Delaware home and office, including sensitive material about Afghanistan. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Hur as special counsel in 2023 to investigate Biden’s handling of those files. Hur’s team obtained the ghostwriter tapes and transcripts and treated them as central evidence in judging whether Biden had willfully kept or shared classified information after leaving office.

Hur’s report concluded there was proof Biden held onto classified material and talked about it with Zwonitzer, including that “classified stuff downstairs” comment, which appears to match Afghanistan documents later found in Biden’s garage. At the same time, Hur decided no criminal charges were warranted. He wrote that the evidence did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Biden knew the passages he read were classified or intended to share classified information. Hur also stressed Biden’s age and memory issues as factors a jury would see, saying Biden came across with a “poor memory” in interviews. That mix — serious mishandling, no charges — has fueled anger on both the right and the left that powerful figures play by different rules.

Courts say public interest outweighs Biden’s privacy

For years, Biden and the Department of Justice fought efforts to release these memoir recordings and related transcripts. Biden’s lawyers argued the 2016 and 2017 talks were deeply personal and were never meant for public consumption. But a federal district judge ruled that redacted versions could be turned over to the Heritage Foundation and to Congress, saying the current redactions removed private family details and left only content with public value. A divided appeals panel later agreed in a 2–1 decision, finding that the “substantial public interest” in the tapes outweighed Biden’s remaining privacy concerns.

The House Judiciary Committee released audio tapes showing former President Joe Biden telling his ghostwriter in 2017 that he possessed and shared classified material for a lucrative book deal. https://t.co/Z58gCu8B33 pic.twitter.com/yFNcihcYvu

— The Washington Times (@WashTimes) July 28, 2026

The Department of Justice is now releasing portions of the material to the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee, which has already used Hur’s findings to press for documents and testimony from Zwonitzer. Committee leaders highlight Hur’s lines about Biden reading classified notes “nearly verbatim” and contrast them with Biden’s public claim, “I did not share classified information … guarantee you, I did not.” The White House and Biden allies push back, stressing Hur’s conclusion that he could not prove Biden knew the passages were classified when he spoke. Still, the fact that the tapes were treated as evidence in a classified-documents case, and then ordered released over Biden’s objections, deepens the sense for many Americans that there is one system for elites and another for everyone else.

Why these tapes feed broader distrust in government

For conservatives who remember harsh treatment of Trump over classified files, the Biden tapes look like proof that a Democratic leader talked casually about “classified stuff downstairs” and faced no charges. For liberals frustrated with secretive government and unequal justice, the tapes show another insider conversation shielded for years until courts forced it into the open. Both sides see a familiar pattern: records made for a private purpose become evidence in a major investigation, then get locked away until legal pressure breaks them loose.

These Biden–ghostwriter tapes sit at the crossroads of three big fights: how presidents handle classified information, how their mental sharpness is judged, and how much the public is allowed to see of investigations involving powerful people. Hur’s report and the court rulings do not settle every political argument, but they do confirm key facts: Biden kept sensitive notes, read some classified material to a ghostwriter without clearance, denied doing so later, and then battled to keep the recordings secret. In a time when many Americans feel the “deep state” protects its own, this case will likely sharpen demands from both the right and the left for one clear standard of accountability — no matter who is holding the classified folder.