In a surprising turn of events, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has disclosed that transcripts of interviews between former Vice President Biden and his biographer, Mark Zwonitzer, do exist.
This revelation, contained in a court filing on Monday, contradicts the department's previous assertions that no such transcripts were available. The DOJ had previously stated that they could not "attest to the accuracy" of any transcript, as reported by Politico.
The transcripts came to light during a Freedom of Information case, initiated following special counsel Robert Hur's report on Biden's alleged retention of classified documents. DOJ lawyers had previously informed US District Judge Dabney Friedrich that processing the audio files of Biden's interviews with Zwonitzer would be a laborious task.
They cited the existence of 70 hours of recordings and argued that reviewing audio for classified materials was more challenging than scanning written documents. "We dont have some transcript thats been created by the special counsel that we can attest to its accuracy, Justice Department lawyer Cameron Silverberg had told Friedrich. However, in a recent court filing, Silverberg revealed that the department had confirmed "in the past few days" that Hurs office had transcripts of a portion of the discussion with Zwonitzer.
The transcripts, he said, contained some classified information. In the past few daysthe Department located six electronic files, consisting of a total of 117 pages, that appeared to be verbatim transcripts of a small subset of the Biden-Zwonitzer audio recordings created for the SCO by a court-reporting service, Silverberg wrote in the filing.
According to The Post Millennial, Hur's report, published in February, stated that he would not recommend criminal charges against Biden for possessing classified materials after his vice presidency. Some of these documents were discovered in his Delaware home, while others were found in a DC office.
Hur's report portrayed Biden as a "sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory." Hur wrote, "Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone from whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him by then a former president well into his eighties of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness."
In May, the White House claimed executive privilege over audio and video recordings from Hurs investigation. Despite attempts by Congress to obtain these recordings from Attorney General Merrick Garland, Biden withdrew from the presidential race on Sunday. The revelation of these transcripts adds another layer of intrigue to this ongoing saga.
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