Former President Joe Biden will not appeal a federal court ruling allowing the Trump Justice Department to release transcripts and audio recordings of his conversations with ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer, according to NPR reporting on July 25, 2026 NPR. Biden's lawyers filed a notice of voluntary dismissal in a related case on Friday, ending the legal fight over the tapes.

The recordings date to 2016 and 2017, when Biden sat for interviews with Zwonitzer, the ghostwriter of his memoir "Promise Me, Dad," after leaving the vice presidency Baltimore Sun. In 2022, while president, Biden notified the Justice Department that classified documents had been discovered at his Wilmington, Delaware home. The DOJ collected the ghostwriter tapes as part of that investigation NPR. On January 15, 2023, Biden, through his personal attorneys, offered and provided consent to a comprehensive, room-by-room search of the Wilmington home, according to a DOJ compilation of communications between the Special Counsel's Office and Biden's attorneys DOJ.

Special Prosecutor Robert Hur concluded in 2024 that criminal charges against Biden were not warranted for his handling of classified documents. The Hur report described Biden as "a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory" and said the tapes were "painfully slow, with Mr. Biden struggling to remember events" NPR.

The Heritage Foundation sued to obtain the tapes in April 2024. The DOJ fought release for nearly two years, including during the first year of the second Trump administration. In May 2026, the Trump Justice Department reversed course and said it intended to disclose both the written transcript and the audio recordings NPR. Politico reported on May 10, 2026 that Biden's lawyers planned to go to court before a deadline that week to fight the release Politico.

After the DOJ's reversal, Biden intervened in the Heritage Foundation lawsuit and also filed a separate lawsuit seeking to block disclosure, arguing his privacy interests outweighed the public interest CBS News. A federal judge initially blocked the DOJ from releasing the conversations CBS News.

Two lower courts, including the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, disagreed with Biden's privacy argument. The D.C. Circuit issued its ruling on July 21, 2026 New York Times. The appeals court stayed its ruling until August 3, 2026, to give Biden's legal team time to consider a further appeal PBS NewsHour. Rather than pursue an appeal to the Supreme Court, Biden's team filed the voluntary dismissal on July 25 NPR.

The DOJ Office of Legal Counsel had previously weighed in on the privilege question. On May 15, 2024, the OLC issued a formal opinion on the assertion of executive privilege over audio recordings connected to the Hur investigation, authored by Assistant Attorney General Christopher C. Fonzone DOJ OLC. That opinion, issued under the Biden administration, had supported the prior posture against disclosure.

Jeffrey Clark, a Trump ally and vice president for litigation at the Oversight Project, told NPR that conservative organizations plan to immediately publicize the entirety of the tapes and transcripts once obtained NPR. A source familiar with the 2017 recordings told NPR the tapes are "painfully boring" because Biden is going through documents one-by-one, reading them, and then discussing them NPR.

The DOJ had already made related materials public. The department posted the transcript of Zwonitzer's interview with investigators, conducted on July 31, 2023, on its justice.gov website DOJ, and released a compilation of communications between the Special Counsel's Office and Biden's attorneys in July 2024 DOJ.

The broader context here involves the unusual dynamic of a Justice Department under one administration reversing its litigation position from the prior administration on a records-release dispute involving that prior president personally. The Biden DOJ's OLC opinion supporting privilege assertions over the Hur audio has now been effectively overridden by the Trump DOJ's May 2026 decision to disclose, and Biden's voluntary dismissal closes off the last judicial avenue to prevent release. With the stay expiring August 3, the path is clear for the recordings and transcripts to be produced. Conservative groups have signaled they intend to release the full content immediately, which would put the audio of Biden's Hur-interview-adjacent conversations into public circulation ahead of the 2026 midterm cycle.