Appeals court denies Biden bid to block release of tapes with biographer, for now
An appeals court denied former President Joe Biden's attempt to keep the Justice Department from giving a conservative think tank redacted transcripts and audio recordings of conversations with his biographer.
In a 2-1 decision, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected Biden's attempt to stop the Heritage Foundation from getting the material.
The majority opinion stated that, "We conclude that Biden has not shown a likelihood that the requested materials must be withheld from disclosure."
On July 10, a three judge panel from the same court agreed to issue an administrative injunction stopping the release of the material to the organization for 10 days.
The court said in a brief unsigned order that the purpose of its injunction, which was to expire at 11:59 p.m. on July 20, was to "give the court sufficient opportunity to consider the emergency motion for an injunction pending appeal and should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits of that motion."
The recordings at issue in the legal fight date back to 2016 and 2017, when Biden sat down with his biographer, Mark Zwonitzer, for his memoir, "Promise Me, Dad." But they gained interest from the Heritage Foundation several years later following an investigation by former special counsel Robert Hur into Biden's handling of sensitive government records after his vice presidency, which ended in 2017. The former president was not charged with any crimes stemming from Hur's investigation.