Biden in Tapes: I 'Found All the Classified Stuff Downstairs'

"I just found all the classified stuff downstairs." That's one of the lines spoken by Joe Biden to a ghostwriter a decade ago in more than two hours of newly released audio recordings, reports the BBC. The conservative group Oversight Project and House Republicans released the cache after the former president gave up his fight to keep them private, per CBS News. The 2016-17 recordings are between Biden and writer Mark Zwonitzer, who was helping Biden write his Promise Me, Dad memoir. In them, Biden refers to having held on to classified information after leaving the vice presidency under Barack Obama.

• "The next thing I have here is, um, this is classified …" he tells Zwonitzer at another point.
• And this: "Some of this may be classified. ... So, be careful. I'm not sure. ... It's not marked classified but—"
• "I have extensive notes over this period of time. ... They [the White House] didn't know I have this," he said in October 2016, while still in office.

The tapes came to light during special counsel Robert Hur's 2024 investigation into whether Biden improperly retained classified information. Hur concluded that Biden had indeed violated the law but didn't recommend charges, saying a jury would see him as "a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory." The Oversight Project has released the cache of recordings at YouTube.