Biden Drops Appeal, Ghostwriter Tapes Set for Release

Former President Joe Biden has declined to appeal a court ruling that clears the way for the release of approximately 70 hours of audio recordings and transcripts of his conversations with ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer, ending a two-year legal battle over the materials. Biden’s lawyers filed a notice of voluntary dismissal on Friday, according to NPR, effectively abandoning the former president’s efforts to keep the recordings private.

Background: The Classified Documents Investigation

The recordings date back to 2016 and 2017, when Biden — then a former vice president — sat for interviews at his Delaware home with Zwonitzer for his memoir Promise Me, Dad. In November 2022, after becoming president, Biden informed the Justice Department that he had discovered classified documents at his Wilmington, Delaware home, triggering an investigation.

Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Robert Hur as Special Counsel in January 2023 to investigate Biden’s handling of classified materials. Hur obtained the ghostwriter tapes during his investigation but ultimately declined to bring charges in February 2024. The Newsmax report noted that Hur’s 2024 findings described Biden reading classified notes “nearly verbatim” to Zwonitzer during their sessions.

The Hur Report Controversy

Hur’s report became a political flashpoint, famously describing Biden as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” and characterizing the tapes as “painfully slow, with Mr. Biden struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries.” Biden denounced the report as “not only misleading, but also plain wrong” at the time.

Conservative activists who have long questioned Biden’s mental fitness have sought the tapes’ release, hoping they will validate those concerns. “What you’re going to hear on the tapes … is the state of Joe Biden years before he ran for president, when a special prosecutor said he has memory issues,” Jeffrey Clark, a Trump ally and vice president for litigation at the Oversight Project, told NPR.

The Legal Battle

The legal fight unfolded over more than two years. Initially, the Biden administration’s Justice Department argued the recordings were exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. But after President Trump returned to office in 2025, the Trump Justice Department reversed course in February 2026, deciding to turn over redacted transcripts and audio to the House Judiciary Committee and the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that had filed a FOIA lawsuit seeking the records.

Biden personally sued in May 2026 to block the release, arguing that the conversations — recorded inside his home during what was intended to be a private memoir process — constituted an unwarranted invasion of his privacy. A Biden source, speaking anonymously, called the Trump DOJ’s reversal a “dangerous” precedent for how the government can wield its power against individuals.

The D.C. Circuit Ruling

On July 20, a divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia rejected Biden’s emergency motion for an injunction by a 2-1 vote. Notably, the panel was not divided along partisan lines. Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan, an Obama appointee, and Judge Gregory Katsas, a Trump appointee, ruled against Biden, while Judge Florence Pan, a Biden appointee, dissented.

The majority wrote that the public has a “weighty” and “significant” interest in scrutinizing a special counsel’s decision not to charge a former vice president over classified material, as reported by Fortune/AP. They concluded that any remaining privacy concerns from disclosure of the redacted materials “likely does not outweigh the public interest in disclosure.”

Judge Pan argued in dissent that Biden had shown a “substantial privacy interest” in conversations recorded inside his home during an investigation that “did not lead to an indictment.”

Biden’s Decision to Stand Down

The panel had stayed its order until August 3 to allow Biden to seek Supreme Court review, but the former president chose not to pursue that option. Biden spokesperson TJ Ducklo said the former president “disagrees” with the ruling but “respects the courts and the vital role an independent judiciary plays in a healthy democracy.”

Biden’s decision to end his legal fight stands in sharp contrast to President Trump’s approach to litigation. Even as Biden withdrew from the tapes case, Trump was asking the Supreme Court for a second time to hear his challenge to a defamation verdict — illustrating the starkly different legal strategies of the two men who have occupied the Oval Office.

What Happens Next

With the appellate stay set to lift on or around August 3, the materials are expected to be released to the Heritage Foundation and the House Judiciary Committee. Conservative organizations plan to immediately publicize the entirety of the tapes and transcripts. “We’ll put out a link,” Clark told NPR. “It’s not more complicated than that.”

The release is expected to reignite debate about Biden’s cognitive state, which was a central issue during the 2024 presidential campaign. The case also establishes a significant legal precedent regarding the limits of a former president’s privacy claims over personal recordings obtained during a criminal investigation — especially one that did not result in charges.