(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that a federal court ordered the U.S. Department of Justice to declare whether it intends to continue denying Judicial Watch’s request for the full audio of former President Joe Biden’s interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur.
Judge Timothy J. Kelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia wrote:
In light of the recent change in administration, it is hereby ORDERED that Defendant shall, by February 19, 2025, file a status report confirming that its position outlined in its [34] Motion for Summary Judgment and [46] Memorandum in Opposition remains unchanged.
Judicial Watch filed the first Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit and is the lead plaintiff asking for the Biden audio recordings of his interviews in Special Counsel Hur’s criminal investigation of Biden’s theft and disclosure of classified records (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:24-cv-00700)).
This lawsuit has already forced the Biden administration to confess that the transcripts of the audio recordings have been altered and are not accurate.
The then-Biden Justice Department, fought to keep the audio recordings secret and asked the court to ignore precedent and rewrite FOIA law. The former Biden agency: demanded that a law enforcement/executive privilege exemption be rewritten to help Joe Biden; wants to change FOIA law to protect (after 50 years of being a politician) President Joe Biden’s privacy in his voice; and sought to potentially end FOIA with a new argument that the possible “AI” alteration of the Hur recordings was reason to keep the keep the recordings and any government record a secret from the public.
“We hope the Trump Justice Department accepts what seems like an invitation from a federal court to end the Biden regime’s cover-up of Biden’s apparent dementia,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said.
Judicial Watch argues that the recordings should be released “because an open question remains about whether Special Counsel Hur’s conclusion that President Biden should not be prosecuted for his mishandling of classified records [and] is supported by the evidence.”
Further, the audio would educate the public about “whether Special Counsel Hur appropriately pursued justice by recommending to the attorney general that criminal charges should not be brought against President Biden concerning his mishandling of classified materials.” This question “is of even more import these days because another special counsel (with approval by Attorney General Garland) is currently prosecuting President Trump for allegedly engaging in similar actions. In addition to President Trump being both President Biden’s former political opponent and the current Republican nominee in the upcoming Presidential election, President Trump is the only former president or vice president to be prosecuted for such actions.”
Judicial Watch also criticized the Biden Justice Department’s reliance on a case that allowed the withholding of the audio of the dying cries of the Challenger astronauts as simply “repugnant.”
On February 5, 2024, Special Counsel Robert Hur issued the “Report of the Special Counsel on the Investigation Into Unauthorized Removal, Retention, and Disclosure of Classified Documents Discovered at Locations Including the Penn Biden Center and the Delaware Private Residence of President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.”
In the report, Hur called Biden a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” and declined to charge Biden with a “serious felony:”
We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory. Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him-by then a former president well into his eighties-of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.
Prior to the finalization of the report, the White House issued a letter to the Special Counsel’s office attacking the report’s “treatment of President Biden’s memory,” and added “there is ample evidence from your interview that the President did well in answering your questions …”
The White House admitted to the court that the transcript of President Joe Biden’s testimony to Special Counsel Robert Hur is not accurate and is missing “filler words (such as ‘um’ or ‘uh’)” and words that “may have been repeated when spoken (such as ‘I, I’ or ‘and, and’)” which were sometimes “only listed a single time in the transcripts.”
The Heritage Foundation and a CNN-led media coalition have been joined with Judicial Watch’s lawsuit.
Judicial Watch has several ongoing FOIA lawsuits about Biden’s document scandals and the related unprecedented partisan prosecutorial and judicial abuses of former President Donald J. Trump.
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Source: Judicial Watch
