Joe Biden’s desperate legal battle to keep dozens of hours of potentially damaging audio recordings and transcripts hidden from the American people has collapsed.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Monday dissolved its temporary administrative injunction blocking the Justice Department from releasing redacted recordings and transcripts of Biden’s conversations with ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer.
The recordings were made in 2016 and 2017 while Zwonitzer was helping Biden prepare his memoir, Promise Me, Dad. The Justice Department later obtained the recordings during Special Counsel Robert Hur’s investigation into Biden’s mishandling of classified information.
Hur’s team also prepared transcripts of the conversations.
The one-page order was issued by a three-judge panel consisting of Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan, an Obama appointee; Judge Gregory Katsas, a Trump appointee; and Judge Florence Pan, a Biden appointee.
The court wrote:
“Upon consideration of the plaintiffs’ emergency motion to dissolve injunction pending appeal, the government’s motion to dissolve administrative injunction, and Appellant Biden’s consent to the government’s motion, it is ORDERED that the administrative injunction entered on July 10, 2026, and extended on July 20, 2026, be dissolved.”
In other words, Biden finally surrendered.
The administrative injunction had temporarily prevented President Trump’s Justice Department from turning over the redacted materials to the Heritage Foundation and Mike Howell, who sued under the Freedom of Information Act.
That final roadblock is now gone.
The Gateway Pundit previously reported that the D.C. Circuit rejected Biden’s emergency request for a longer injunction in a 2-1 decision on July 20.
The court nevertheless extended its temporary hold until August 3 to give Biden time to pursue additional review.
But instead of taking the fight further, Biden consented to the Trump Justice Department’s request to dissolve the injunction immediately.
The DOJ is now free to release the redacted audio recordings and transcripts to Heritage.
The recordings are distinct from Biden’s recorded interview with Hur. They capture Biden’s earlier conversations with Zwonitzer and were later obtained and examined by Hur’s investigators.
Hur cited those conversations repeatedly in his February 2024 report, describing them as “painfully slow,” with Biden struggling to remember events and straining to read and relay entries from his notebooks.
The special counsel found evidence that Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials” after leaving the Obama White House, including classified information he discussed with his ghostwriter.
Hur nevertheless declined to prosecute Biden, infamously writing that the then-president could present himself to a jury as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
That astonishing conclusion immediately ignited accusations that Biden received preferential treatment from a weaponized Justice Department while federal prosecutors aggressively pursued President Trump.
The Biden Justice Department initially fought the Heritage Foundation’s FOIA lawsuit and attempted to keep most of the materials concealed. After President Trump returned to the White House, however, the DOJ reversed course and announced that it intended to release redacted versions.
Biden then intervened personally, claiming the conversations were private and that releasing them would cause irreparable harm.
U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich rejected that argument in June, finding that Biden’s diminished privacy interests were outweighed by the overwhelming public interest in examining the evidence behind Hur’s politically explosive decision not to prosecute him. The D.C. Circuit agreed.
The Gateway Pundit also reported when the appeals court issued its initial temporary injunction on July 10.
Now that temporary victory has evaporated and Biden’s years-long effort to keep the tapes buried has ended in total surrender.
The American people may finally hear the evidence that Biden and his handlers fought so hard to keep hidden.
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