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Former President Joe Biden’s effort to block the release of recordings and transcripts from his ghostwriter was derailed late Monday when a divided federal appeals court rejected the request.
The three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found a “substantial” public interest in the material, which includes Biden’s conversations with the biographer from 2016 and 2017.
One judge, Biden-nominated Florence Pan, disagreed with the ruling in a dissenting opinion in which she sided with the former president, saying he had a “substantial privacy interest” in keeping the material out of the spotlight.
“The conversations at issue took place in Biden’s home, and the recordings of them were obtained by the government in the course of a criminal investigation that did not lead to an indictment,” Pan found.
But the materials have now been redacted, the majority of the panel found, giving privacy concerns less weight.
“We conclude that any remaining incursion on personal privacy from disclosure of the now-redacted materials likely does not outweigh the public interest in disclosure,” according to the ruling.
The panel’s 2-1 ruling was paused until Aug. 3, to give Biden time to make another appeal.
Biden sued in May to halt the release of the material, which the Justice Department wanted to make public by June 15 after a request from the conservative Heritage Foundation.
The foundation submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for the ghostwriter’s materials after they became part of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s 2023 probe of Biden’s handling of classified documents.
Hur’s investigation did not result in criminal charges but became a flashpoint in the debate over Biden’s age and fitness for office.
President Donald Trump raged on Truth Social in May about Biden’s decision to sue his administration over the release of the materials.
“A Crooked Politician!!!” the president wrote.
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