A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Monday denied former Joe Biden’s emergency motion for an injunction pending appeal that sought to block the Justice Department from releasing redacted transcripts and audio recordings of his private conversations with ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer.
The 2-1 order, in Heritage Foundation and Mike Howell v. United States Department of Justice, was signed by Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan (Obama appointee) and Judge Gregory Katsas (Trump appointee). Judge Florence Pan (Biden appointee) dissented and would have granted the injunction.
The materials at issue are hours of recordings and transcripts from 2016 and 2017 sessions in which Biden spoke with Zwonitzer while preparing his memoir Promise Me, Dad.
Special Counsel Robert Hur obtained the recordings during his investigation into Biden’s unauthorized retention and disclosure of classified documents.
Hur’s team prepared transcripts and relied on both the audio and transcripts in concluding that Biden willfully retained classified material after leaving the vice presidency while ultimately declining to bring charges.
Hur’s report famously described Biden as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
The Gateway Pundit previously reported that the Biden White House admitted to altering the transcript of Joe Biden’s testimony to the Special Counsel to make him appear less incompetent.
Biden has personally invoked Executive Privilege against The Heritage Foundation and Judicial Watch in an attempt to keep his controversial interview with Special Counsel Hur under wraps.
As The Gateway Pundit previously reported, U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich (a Trump appointee) ruled in June that the Justice Department could release the redacted materials to the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project and the House Judiciary Committee under the Freedom of Information Act. Biden intervened, lost at the district court, and raced to the D.C. Circuit seeking emergency relief.
The appellate court rejected Biden’s argument that the recordings should remain private under FOIA’s privacy exemptions.
Writing for the majority, the court found that the public has a substantial interest in examining the evidence underlying Hur’s decision not to prosecute the former president.
“The public has a ‘weighty’ and ‘significant’ interest in ‘shining a light’ on the Special Counsel’s investigation of a former Vice President for alleged mishandling and disclosure of classified information,” the court wrote. It added that the requested materials would allow the public to assess whether the Special Counsel properly handled the investigation and whether his conclusions were justified.
The panel also noted that the Justice Department had already made extensive redactions, removing references to sensitive personal matters, non-public individuals, illnesses, deaths, and Biden family members before deciding to release the records.
According to the court, the remaining material largely concerns Biden’s discussions of foreign policy and his decision not to run for president in 2016, much of which has already been made public through Hur’s report and Biden’s memoir.
Because of those redactions, the court concluded that Biden’s remaining privacy interests do not outweigh the public’s interest in disclosure.
The majority further held that Biden was unlikely to succeed on his claims that DOJ violated the Administrative Procedure Act when it reversed its earlier decision to withhold the materials. The judges found the department adequately explained its change in position and reasonably balanced the competing interests.
We continue to beat Joe Biden’s heavily overcompensated lawyers trying to continue to hide the Autopen Presidency.
Just minutes ago we won by 2-1 vote at the DC Circuit to let the Biden tapes with his ghost writer be released to the public.
Biden gets until August 3 to try to… https://t.co/O2j0Wvo6Vh pic.twitter.com/hd3hqqJCBT
— Jeff Clark (@JeffClarkUS) July 21, 2026
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