Joe Biden sues the Justice Department
The former president does not want the release of audio recordings and transcripts of private conversations made with his biographer in 2016 and 2017
Extraordinary move by Joe Biden: the former US president is effectively suing his successor's government, in this case the Justice Department. Filed in a federal court in Washington DC, the lawsuit is designed to prevent the dissemination of audio recordings and transcripts of private conversations made with his biographer in 2016 and 2017 ahead of the publication of the memoir 'Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose', which recounts Biden's decision to run for president while his eldest son Beau was battling a brain tumour. Those documents were later used in 2023 by then-Special Prosecutor Robert Hur as part of an investigation into Biden's handling of top-secret documents he had kept after ending his vice presidency in 2017. Hur decided not to indict him, describing him as "a well-meaning old man with a poor memory" (the latter argument rejected by Biden, who has since become president).
The legal battle
The move by Donald Trump's predecessor is ahead of the Justice Department's planned release on 15 June of those files to the House Judiciary Committee and to theHeritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind the controversial Project 2025 plan designed to radically transform the government ahead of Trump's re-election. That think tank had aimed to obtain the files in question in 2024, but until Trump's re-election the US Justice Department claimed that they were exempt from the Freedom of Information Act, the law that guarantees the right of access to government records. Then the department released them at the request of the House Judiciary Committee, a request that for Biden is only designed to bypass federal law. That is why with the lawsuit, the former president is aiming to prevent the release of the files once and for all.
