DOJ finds transcripts of Biden conversations with biographer — after denying having them

After special counsel Robert Hur delivered, in February, his final report on classified government documents President Joe Biden had in his Delaware home, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) was inundated with Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) requests.

Now, Politico is reporting that DOJ, on Monday, July 22, acknowledged to a federal judge "that it has located transcripts it previously denied having of President Joe Biden's talks with a biographer that played a role in the recently completed criminal investigation into Biden's handling of classified material before he became president."

"Some of the (FoIA) requests came from news outlets, while others originated with conservative groups apparently seeking to obtain information that could reinforce doubts about Biden's mental acuity and fitness for the presidency," Politico reporters Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney explain. "Nagging concerns about those issues, particularly after a disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump last month, helped drive Biden's announcement Sunday that he is dropping his bid for reelection."

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With his final report, Hur decided that criminal charges against Biden were not warranted. But Biden supporters were not happy that Hur described the president as "a well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory."

Meanwhile, some Donald Trump supporters claimed that it was unfair that Biden escaped prosecution — as Trump, at the time, was facing a criminal indictment by special counsel Jack Smith for storing classified government documents at Mar-a-Lago (Judge Aileen Cannon recently dropped those charges, much to the frustration of Trump's critics). But Biden's allies, in response, stressed that Biden fully cooperated with the FBI during its probe.

"It's unclear whether his exit from the race will affect the handling of Hur's materials by the Justice Department, which has argued that the release of audio of Biden's interviews with Hur would violate the president's privacy, lead to potential abuse — such as deepfakes — and deter other witnesses from agreeing to recorded interviews," Gerstein and Cheney report. "Biden asserted executive privilege over the audio recordings of his interviews in a bid to head off House Republicans' effort to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress for refusing to release the recordings."

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Read Politico's full report at this link.