Joe Biden appears to discuss sensitive information on tape with ghostwriter

President Joe Biden speaks at the International African American Museum in Charleston, S.C., Jan. 19, 2025. Photograph: Stephanie Scarbrough/AP View image in fullscreen President Joe Biden speaks at the International African American Museum in Charleston, S.C., Jan. 19, 2025. Photograph: Stephanie Scarbrough/AP Joe Biden appears to discuss sensitive information on tape with ghostwriter In recordings made in 2016 and 2017 former president also appears to describe possessing classified information Former US president Joe Biden appeared to discuss sensitive information and describe possessing classified documents in audio recordings released on Monday by the Oversight Project, a conservative activist group. The heavily redacted transcripts and recordings were made in 2016 and 2017, while Biden was working with a ghostwriter on his 2017 memoir, Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose. No classified material was ever alleged to have appeared in the book. Biden, at times, seems to struggle to remember certain details or dates regarding events and topics in the transcripts and recordings, prompting the Oversight Project – as well as some conservative media outlets – to allege that he was “ already demonstrating significant cognitive decline” in the years before he ran for president. In a recording dated October 2016 , near the end of Biden’s second term as vice- president under former president Barack Obama, Biden can be heard discussing notes he says he kept from his time in office. “There was a lot of stuff going on at the same time in foreign policy,” Biden said . “You didn’t want to go into it, but I have extensive notes … over this period of time.” “Oh, that’s in – oh, you actually have those here,” the writer responds. To which Biden says, “yeah, now, there’s a lot of other notes too”, and goes on to say: “These – this is my – they didn’t even know I had this.” “Some of this stuff, I’m not, you know, going to – um so I go back, you know what I mean?” Biden continues. “I have stuff on, you know, five – here we go, I mean, it’s like … I have stuff on all the way up to 5/19.” A representative for Biden didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from the Guardian on Tuesday about the recordings. But a spokesperson for Biden told CBS News : “President Biden’s conversations for a book a decade ago that discussed his late son are private, and were provided to the Department of Justice on the express condition they stay that way.” “Reversing course and making them public is just the latest example of this Administration weaponizing the DoJ for political retribution,” they added. “It’s wrong, and while President Biden disagrees with today’s decision, he also respects the courts and the vital role an independent judiciary plays in a healthy democracy.” Classified materials were also found at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club after he left office following his first term. In 2024, a federal judge dismissed the case, ruling that