After claiming they did not exist, Justice Dept. ‘finds’ transcripts of Biden conversations with biographer
In what a commentary at RedState sarcastically called a “coincidence,” the Department of Justice now has said it does have transcripts of Joe Biden’s conversations with a biographer, reversing course from its earlier claims they didn’t exist.
“The Department of Justice has ‘found’ transcripts of exchanges between Joe Biden and his biographer that the department previously claimed didn’t exist,” the report confirmed. “The acknowledgment was made to a federal judge on Monday evening as part of an ongoing attempt by several organizations to secure information via the Freedom of Information Act.”
Those documents, if made available earlier, could have had a significant impact on special counsel Robert Hur’s investigation of Biden for mishandling classified government documents.
Hur ended up concluding Biden did commit the federal offense, but recommended against charging him because of his “diminished” capacities. However, one of the claims was that Biden used the classified material in conversations with a biographer, and might even have allowed him to see those papers.
The new “discovery” comes months after Hur ended his investigation into Biden’s mishandling of paperwork, and one day after Biden took himself out of the race for the Democrat nomination for president this year.
Hur called Biden a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” but the evidence regarding his apparent sharing classified documentation with a civilian writer was not available earlier.
Since then, the DOJ has faced numerous Freedom of Information Act requests and lawsuits over the Hur probe and conclusion.
NEW: Justice Department discovers transcripts it previously said it did not have of Biden’s chats with biographer discussed in Hur report. Also, DOJ relents and asks Hur for help in responding to flurry of #FOIA suits for his records
w/@kyledcheneyhttps://t.co/Tg5G90X4ti— Josh Gerstein (@joshgerstein) July 23, 2024
Fox News reported DOJ lawyers earlier claimed it would be time-consuming to process audio files of conservations between Biden and biographer Mark Zwonitzer into transcripts.
“We don’t have some transcript that’s been created by the special counsel that we can attest to its accuracy,” Cameron Silverberg, a DOJ lawyer, claimed in court to Judge Dabeny Friedrich just weeks ago.
Then, on Monday, Silverberg told Friedrich Hur’s’ office did, in fact, have transcripts of some of Biden’s discussions with Zwonitzer.
The filing said, “In the past few days, in the course of processing the portions of the Biden-Zwonitzer audio recordings that the parties agreed to (see June 25, 2024 Joint Status Report at 2-3, ECF No. 20), the 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.”:
The filing said DOJ ultimately asked Hur about what documents he used.
The report continued, “The findings sparked widespread outrage that Biden was effectively deemed too cognitively impaired to be charged with a crime yet could still serve as president.”
The fight continues, too, the Congress demanding the audio recordings of Hur’s interviews with Biden, in addition to transcripts. Members explain they can determine more about Biden’s cognitive abilities – and decline – by actually hearing him.
Biden has claimed executive privilege over the recordings and administration officials have refused to comply with Congress’ requests.
RedState explained, “These transcripts are a big deal because one of the most direct allegations of criminality involving Biden’s actions was that he shared classified information with his biographer. Had these been handed over months ago, it could have dramatically escalated the stakes regarding Hur’s investigation and his subsequent report. It would have also deepened the scandal for a White House that was already in crisis given Biden’s other issues, including his mental and physical condition.”
That article charged, “It is simply not believable that the DOJ didn’t know about these transcripts until the exact moment it became most politically convenient to acknowledge them. Now that Biden is out of the race, he is no longer in need of protection from AG Merrick Garland and his compromised department. Further, it allows now-presumptive Democratic Party nominee Kamala Harris to claim that the administration is ‘transparent’ despite the obvious timing issues at play.”
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