Donald Trump blasted Joe Biden after the former president sued the Justice Department to block the release of audio recordings from a special counsel investigation.
Trump reacted on Truth Social after it emerged that Biden had filed a federal lawsuit seeking to stop the DOJ from releasing recordings and transcripts connected to interviews conducted during the writing of his 2017 memoir, Promise Me, Dad.
“A Crooked Politician!!!” Trump wrote while reposting an article about the case.
The lawsuit aims to prevent the department from handing the materials over to the House Judiciary Committee and the Heritage Foundation on June 15.
The conservative group has spent more than a year fighting to obtain the records after Robert Hur’s report raised questions about Biden’s memory and mental sharpness.
Biden’s lawyers argued the release would amount to “an unwarranted invasion of President Biden’s privacy,” noting the conversations took place inside his home while he was reflecting on deeply personal moments, including the illness and death of his eldest son, Beau.
“Every American, including a sitting or former Vice President, has a right to privacy in the personal conversations he has within his own home,” Biden’s attorneys wrote.
The filing also accuses Trump’s Justice Department of abruptly reversing the government’s earlier legal position after Trump returned to office this year. Under Biden, the DOJ had fought against disclosure of the recordings.
The recordings became politically explosive after Hur repeatedly cited them in his 2024 report investigating Biden’s handling of classified documents.
In the report, Hur described Biden as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” and pointed to what he characterized as “diminished faculties and faulty memory” during the interviews.
Biden and his allies fiercely pushed back on Hur’s characterization at the time, arguing the report strayed beyond its legal findings and unfairly amplified concerns about Biden’s age ahead of the 2024 election.
“These assertions are not only misleading, they’re just plain wrong,” Biden said at the time. “My memory is fine.”
Hur ultimately declined to bring charges over Biden’s handling of classified documents, concluding there was insufficient evidence that he had “willfully” retained or disclosed national defense information.
Trump, who was facing his own classified documents prosecution at the time, immediately seized on the decision as evidence of a political double standard.
“You know, look, if he’s not going to be charged, that’s up to them. But then I should not be charged,” Trump said.
“This is nothing more than selective persecution of Biden’s political opponent: me.”
