Former President Joe Biden sued the U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday, seeking to block the release of audio recordings and transcripts of private conversations with his biographer from 2016 and 2017.
The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Washington D.C., ahead of the department's planned June 15 release of the materials to the House Judiciary Committee and the conservative Heritage Foundation.
The Heritage Foundation had requested the materials after they were used in former Special Counsel Robert Hur's 2023 investigation into Biden's handling of classified documents. Hur declined to bring charges.
The department fought the Heritage Foundation's 2024 request under the Freedom of Information Act until President Donald Trump took office, the lawsuit claims. It then announced it would release the records in response to the committee's request, which the lawsuit argues is merely a pretext to circumvent federal law.
Biden's lawyers ask the court to declare the committee's request invalid and permanently bar the release of the records to the committee.
The recordings are part of the writing process for Biden's 2017 memoir, 'Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose.'
