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‘Just Found All the Classified Stuff’: Biden Acknowledges Secret Documents in New Ghostwriter Tapes
The tapes confirm that Biden’s memory struggles began as early as 2017.
Newly released audio recordings of Joe Biden and his ghostwriter working on his 2017 memoir confirm that the former president was well aware that he was in possession of classified material at the time, and reveal the true extent of his cognitive decline.
“I just found all the classified stuff downstairs,” Biden can be heard telling ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer in February 2017, one month after he left the Obama White House. Biden and Zwonitzer were working on his 2017 memoir, Promise Me, Dad.
Special Counsel Robert Hur investigated Biden’s retention of classified information and announced in 2024 that, while Biden had improperly retained the records, he would not recommend that charges be brought given that Biden’s impaired mental state made it unlikely that a jury would find him guilty.
House Republicans, alongside the conservative nonprofit the Oversight Project, sued to force Biden to release the tapes. The Biden Justice Department refused to release the tapes and Biden’s personal lawyers fought to keep the tapes private, though they dropped their opposition on Monday after a series of legal defeats.
Biden’s spokesman dismissed the House Republican investigation into Biden’s handling of classified information as a political retribution campaign.
“President Biden’s conversations for a book a decade ago that discussed his late son are private, and were provided to the Department of Justice on the express condition they stay that way. Reversing course and making them public is just the latest example of this Administration weaponizing the DOJ for political retribution,” Biden spokesperson TJ Ducklo said in a statement. “It’s wrong, and while President Biden disagrees with today’s decision, he also respects the courts and the vital role an independent judiciary plays in a healthy democracy.”
Biden repeatedly acknowledges throughout the two-hour recording that he’s making classified information available to Zwonitzer.
“The next thing I have here is, um, this is classified,” Biden can be heard saying. In one October, 2016 recording, Biden suggests that the Obama White House is unaware that he retained notes from high-level meetings during his time as vice president.
“I have extensive notes over this period of time… They [the White House] didn’t know I have this.”
At multiple points, Biden loses his train of thought and struggles to remember names and dates while recounting events to Zwonitzer.
“Alright — what was I going to ask you? Something else… Uh… um. Oh gosh. I can’t think of anything else,” Biden says in one representative sentence.
“Since March 2024, the Oversight Project and the Heritage Foundation fought tooth and nail to bring these tapes to light,” the groups said in a statement. “Together, we defeated both the Biden-led Justice Department and his high-price private attorneys. These tapes we are releasing today should have come out a long time ago.”