White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Daily Caller White House Correspondent Reagan Reese on Tuesday that Americans would be “quite interested” in hearing the long-hidden audio recording of former President Joe Biden’s interview with former special counsel Robert Hur. “I don’t have an update on that, but I can certainly check,” Leavitt told Reese during Tuesday’s White House press briefing before adding, “I think the American people would be quite interested to hear that tape.”
In 2023, Biden’s Justice Department appointed Hur to investigate the former president’s handling of classified documents. Although Hur concluded that Biden willfully retained classified national security materials, he ultimately chose not to bring criminal charges. In his report, the former special counsel described Biden 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,” Hur wrote. Biden’s Department of Justice repeatedly blocked both Congress and the media from accessing the tapes. In early April 2024, House Republicans demanded that the DOJ release an audio recording, but their request was refused. The DOJ reportedly denied FOIA requests for the recording from multiple organizations, prompting several to file a lawsuit in July. A group of media outlets led by CNN, including The Associated Press and Reuters, joined the legal challenge.
In July 2024, the House of Representatives voted Thursday against a resolution that would impose daily $10,000 fines on then-Attorney General Garland for continuing to withhold the audiotapes of President Joe Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur. Introduced by Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida and aimed at holding Garland in “inherent contempt,” the measure failed by a vote of 204-210. Notably, the House had already passed a resolution in June to hold Garland in contempt for violating a Congressional subpoena, following President Biden’s May invocation of executive privilege to block the tapes’ release.
