The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, DC, comes ahead of the department’s planned June 15 release of the materials to the US House Judiciary Committee and the conservative Heritage Foundation.
The foundation sought them after they were used as part of then-special counsel Robert Hur’s 2023 investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents. Hur declined to bring criminal charges.
The department fought the Heritage Foundation’s 2024 request for the records as exempt from the Freedom of Information Act until President Donald Trump took office, the lawsuit claims. It announced it would be releasing the records in response to the committee’s request, which the lawsuit claims is meant only to skirt federal law barring their release.
The lawsuit asks the court to declare the committee’s request pretextual and invalid, and permanently bar the release of the records to the committee.
A spokesperson for the Department of Justice said the department during the Biden administration sought to hide recordings that showed a decline in Biden’s cognitive abilities as far back as 2016.
