‘Eight Million Reasons’: Jim Jordan Accuses Biden of Retaining Classified Info to Secure Lucrative Book Deal

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R., Ohio.) believes he knows why Joe Biden retained classified information from his vice presidency and used it for his book.

Jordan questioned special counsel Robert Hur Tuesday about why exactly Joe Biden held onto classified notebook entries that he read aloud to his ghostwriter during the production of his book. Hur’s final report on Biden’s possession of classified information suggests Biden kept those notebook entries because they provided substance for his book and satisfied his ego.

“Finally, Mr. Biden had strong motivations to ignore the proper procedures for safeguarding the classified information in his notebooks. He decided months before leaving office to write a book and began meeting with his ghostwriter while still vice president,” page 231 of Hur’s final report states.

“After his vice presidency, the notebooks continued to be an invaluable resource that he consulted liberally.”

Jordan cited that portion of Hur’s report and noted Joe Biden made $8 million dollars from his book deal after asking Hur if he could specify Biden’s motivations.

“Joe Biden had 8 million reasons to break the rules. He took classified information and shared it with the guy who was writing the book. He knew the rules but he broke them for 8 million dollars in a book advance,” Jordan said.

Another motivation for Joe Biden to keep the notebook entries was to memorialize important moments from his vice presidency and preserve his legacy, Hur’s report says.

“He also likely viewed the notebooks, like the marked classified documents related to Afghanistan recovered from his garage, as an irreplaceable contemporaneous record of some of the most important moments of his vice presidency. This record was valuable to him for many reasons, including to help defend his record and buttress his legacy as a world leader,” Hur wrote in his report.

Jordan proceeded to cite those excerpts and ask Hur if he agreed that “pride and money” were Joe Biden’s motives for holding the classified information.

“That language does appear in the report and we did identify evidence supporting those assessments,” Hur replied.

Mark Zwonitzer, the ghostwriter of Biden’s book Promise Me, Dad, allegedly deleted audio recordings of his conversations with Joe Biden after Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Hur special counsel in January 2023, Hur’s final report says. Hur confirmed Zwonitzer attempted to delete the audio recordings from his computer in response to questions from Jordan.

“He slid those files into his recycle bin on his computer,” Hur said.

“He tried to destroy the evidence, didn’t he?” Jordan followed up.

“Correct,” Hur answered.

FBI analysts were able to recover the deleted files once Zwonitzer turned over his laptop and an external hard drive. In addition, Zwonitzer eventually turned over transcripts he created of some of the interview recordings to federal investigators. Hur declined to pursue criminal charges against Zwonitzer for deleting the records based on the principles of federal prosecution and insufficient evidence to obtain a conviction.

In his opening statement, Hur defended the sections of his report where he observed Joe Biden’s declining mental faculties because assessing Biden’s mind was necessary to determine whether he deserved criminal charges for retaining classified information. Ultimately, Hur declined to pursue criminal charges against the sitting president even though he found evidence Biden “willfully” possessed the classified documents.

Transcripts from Hur’s two-part interview with President Biden appear to corroborate the part of Hur’s report that indicated Biden struggled to recall the time period he was vice president and the exact year his son Beau Biden passed away.