The House Judiciary Committee asked the ghostwriter of President Biden’s memoir to turn over any recordings and notes from his conversations with the president.
The letter to Mark Zwonitzer, who helped Biden write “Promise Me, Dad” and “Promises to Keep,” asks the ghostwriter to turn over audio recordings and transcripts he has of their conversations.
The request comes after special counsel Robert Hur said Biden read aloud passages from notebooks he kept during his time in office, including on three occasions when Biden shared passages dealing with classified information with Zwonitzer.
“Special Counsel Hur’s report unequivocally provides that ‘During many of the interviews with his ghostwriter, Biden read from his notebooks nearly verbatim, sometimes for an hour or more at a time,’ and ‘at least three times Biden read classified notes from national security meetings to [you] nearly verbatim.’ Based on the information in Special Counsel Hur’s report, President Biden’s assertion that he never shared classified information with you appears to be false,” Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) wrote in the letter.
Zwonitzer is unlikely to be able to fully comply with the request.
Hur’s report notes that Zwonitzer deleted the audio recordings from his computer once the investigation was announced, with law enforcement ultimately recovering the audio files. He did, however, retain the transcripts.
Hur noted that Biden read aloud “certain classified notebook passages to the ghostwriter nearly verbatim on at least three occasions.”
“Mr. Biden should have known that by reading his unfiltered notes about classified meetings in the Situation Room, he risked sharing classified information with his ghostwriter. But the evidence does not show that when Mr. Biden shared the specific passages with his ghostwriter, Mr. Biden knew the passages were classified and intended to share classified information,” Hur concluded.
Hur also wrote that “the evidence falls short of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Zwonitzer intended to impede an investigation.”
Zwonitzer could not immediately be reached for comment, and the White House did not respond to a request for comment.
The Judiciary Committee, along with two other panels, asked the Justice Department on Monday to turn over its recordings of Hur’s interview with Biden conducted as part of the investigation.
Mychael Schnell contributed.