Former President Biden sues DOJ over release of interview audio

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Joe Biden listens as Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani speaks in the Oval Office of the White House on April 15, 2024 in Washington, DC. Biden and al-Sudani intend to speak on Iran’s drone strike on Israel over the weekend. Al-Sudani’s visit to the U.S. was already arranged last month with the intention to also discuss a range of topics pertaining to economic, trade and energy issues. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

May 26 (Reuters) - Former Democratic U.S. President Joe Biden sued the U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday, seeking to bar the release of audio recordings and transcripts of private conversations with ​his biographer in 2016 and 2017. 

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington D.C., comes ahead of the department’s planned June 15 release of the materials to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee and the conservative Heritage Foundation.

The foundation sought them after they were used as part of then-Special ;Counsel Robert Hur’s 2023 investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents. Hur declined to bring criminal charges. 

The department fought the Heritage Foundation’s 2024 request for the records as exempt from the Freedom of Information Act until President Donald Trump took office, the lawsuit claims. It announced it would be releasing the records in response to the committee’s request, which the lawsuit claims is meant only to skirt federal law barring their release.

The lawsuit asks the court to declare the committee’s request pretextual and invalid, and permanently bar the release of the records to the committee.

Representatives for the Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The recordings, made in Biden’s home, were part of the writing process for ​his 2017 memoir, "Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose,” which detailed Biden’s decision to pursue the presidency while his eldest son Beau fought brain cancer.

Earlier this month, Biden sought to intervene in the Heritage Foundation’s lawsuit against the Justice Department over the materials. Last week, a judge allowed Biden to join the case but barred him from pursuing claims about the committee’s request for the materials, according to court records.