Judge blocks DOJ from releasing Biden's conversations with biographer for 3 weeks

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: CBS News

Updated on: June 19, 2026 / 6:15 PM EDT / CBS News


Washington — A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the Justice Department from giving a conservative think tank a redacted transcript and recordings of former President Joe Biden's decade-old conversations with his biographer, Mark Zwonitzer. U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich granted Biden's request for an injunction to give a federal appeals court a chance to decide whether to take action on the case, effectively delaying her own order from earlier in the day. She said her order will remain in place for three weeks.

Earlier Friday, Friedrich had denied Biden's bid to stop the Justice Department from disclosing the material to the Heritage Foundation. The judge said Biden's privacy interests in the case are mitigated by "extensive redactions" by the Justice Department. The government had agreed to delay the release of the material to the Heritage Foundation until 5 p.m. Friday.

"Biden has not identified any public harm that would arise absent an injunction in this case," Friedrich wrote in a 26-page decision. "And, as with the Department's FOIA balancing discussed above, the harm to Biden's diminished privacy interest is outweighed by the public's interest in the Zwonitzer materials and FOIA's 'policy of broad disclosure of Government documents in order to ensure an informed citizenry, vital to the functioning of a democratic society.'"

On the heels of Friedrich's decision, Biden's lawyers filed an emergency motion asking the judge to block the disclosure of the transcript and tapes to the Heritage Foundation while it appeals her decision — a motion Friedrich later granted.

Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/biden-justice-department-conservations-ghostwriter-heritage-foundation/

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Link to updated (Minute) ORDER - https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68316879/heritage-foundation-v-us-department-of-justice/#minute-entry-468158703

Link to Biden FILING (PDF) - https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.265819/gov.uscourts.dcd.265819.79.1.pdf

REFERENCE - https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143681635

[BootinUp]

1. This material does not belong to the government

[BumRushDaShow]

2. Exactly

The Nixon tapes precedent eventually designated some of the tapes as "personal" and not subject to the archive, and thus needed to be returned to Nixon.

[choie]

3. What the hell is going on?

These are personal records for a book, not the Nixon tapes with the 18 minutes missing.

I wonder if the situation was Trump suing to keep his conversations hidden from Pro Publica if the judge would rule the same.

I am so fucking sick of Biden being treated differently than the orange bastard would.