The ghostwriter of President Joe Biden’s memoir told federal investigators that he deleted audio recordings of his interview with Biden after learning that a special counsel was appointed by the U.S. Department of Justice to launch a criminal investigation into Biden’s handling of classified information.
Axios reported that writer Mark Zwonitzer told federal authorities that he deleted the recordings after Special Counsel Robert Hur was appointed to investigate Biden because he feared the recordings getting out into the public domain.
“I was very concerned about the possibility of being hacked,” he claimed, according to a partial transcript of his interview with investigators. “I was very concerned about the possibility of this audio spread all over the place.”
He said that he saved the transcripts of what Biden allegedly said and that deleting audio recordings was “something … I do as a … rule anyway.”
The Wall Journal reported earlier this month that Attorney General Merrick Garland was stunned when he learned about Biden’s conduct during the interview, that the then-vice president admitted on a recording to having classified material in his house and was discussing that material with someone who was not authorized to receive it.
According to the transcript, investigators said to Zwonitzer that the average outside observer is going to look at what he did and conclude that his actions were spurred by wanting to protect Biden from investigators.
“And I assume — and it’s okay, I just need the truth on this one, but there’s some truth in that, that was what was going on,” investigators said. “That was part of your motivation, at least something you were aware of when you did this?””
Zwonitzer responded: “I’m not going to say how much of the percentage it was of my motivation. I was aware that there was an investigation.”
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He claimed that no one connected to the president reached out to him.
Hur decided not to prosecute Zwonitzer because they believed that he “offered plausible, innocent reasons for why he deleted the recordings.”
“Zwonitzer willingly provided significant cooperation to the investigation without seeking or receiving any protections or assurances,” Hur added. “He was forthright in describing his conduct and working with investigators to obtain all relevant evidence in his possession.”
One of the reasons Hur declined to prosecute Biden was the president’s mental fitness, or lack thereof.
“Mr. Biden’s memory was significantly limited, both during his recorded interviews with the ghostwriter in 2017 [with whom he shared classified materials], and in his interview with our office in 2023,” the report said in its executive summary. “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.”
Prosecutors said that based on the way that Biden presents, jurors will “want to identify reasonable doubt” and that 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.”
