President Biden trusted the ghostwriter behind his two memoirs so much that \u201cat least three times\u201d he read aloud to him passages from journals containing classified details of Obama-era deliberations, according to a special counsel report released Thursday.<\/p>\n
Federal investigators last year sought the recordings author Mark Zwonitzer produced during his meetings with Biden around 2016, while they worked together on Biden\u2019s second memoir. But upon learning of the special counsel\u2019s probe in 2023, Zwonitzer deleted the audio files, according to the lengthy report concerning Biden\u2019s handling of classified documents after leaving the Obama White House.<\/p>\n
Zwonitzer, who did not respond to requests for comment left by phone and email, told investigators he deleted the files as a routine practice to preserve his client\u2019s privacy. Special counsel Robert K. Hur considered charges against the writer but ultimately decided there wasn\u2019t enough evidence to prove he intentionally tried to obstruct justice.<\/p>\n
Hur also did not recommend charges against Biden on Thursday, concluding that the president had carelessly handled classified materials but that the evidence of intent was thin.<\/p>\n
Among Hur\u2019s findings was that Biden had \u201cwillfully retained and disclosed classified materials to his ghost writer (Zwonitzer) after his vice presidency.\u201d Zwonitzer never held a security clearance, and Biden knew this, the report added. But Hur said the evidence \u201cdoes not establish Mr. Biden\u2019s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.\u201d<\/p>\n
Biden said at a news conference Thursday that he did not share classified information while working with Zwonitzer. The two men have shared a close relationship for more than a decade.<\/p>\n
Biden had long been a fan of Richard Ben Cramer\u2019s widely praised book \u201cWhat it Takes,\u201d which chronicles the 1988 presidential campaign. So when he sought help with his memoir in 2006, Biden turned to Zwonitzer \u2014 Cramer\u2019s researcher and \u201cright-hand man.\u201d As the Obama administration ended, Biden again tapped Zwonitzer to write his second memoir, \u201cPromise Me, Dad.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zwonitzer became more of a friend to Biden than political ghostwriter, Politico reported in 2021, going as far as referring to him as the president\u2019s \u201csecret muse.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 345-page special counsel report released Thursday details how Biden saved notebooks from his vice presidency and routinely shared the contents with Zwonitzer to aid the memoir-writing process. According to a staffer, Biden wanted to take copies of the notes \u201cso that he didn\u2019t have to go to [the National Archives] every day to help write this book,\u201d the report stated.<\/p>\n
Zwonitzer recalled Biden mentioning the need to be careful with the notes due to their possibly classified nature. Meanwhile, Biden would also \u201cread his notes from classified meetings to Zwonitzer nearly word-for-word,\u201d the report stated.<\/p>\n
In January 2023, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Hur as special counsel after Biden\u2019s aides said they discovered classified materials when they searched the president\u2019s home in Delaware and office in D.C. According to the report, after learning of the special counsel\u2019s appointment, Zwonitzer deleted his audio recordings of conversations with Biden during the process of writing \u201cPromise Me, Dad,\u201d which was published in 2017.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe recordings had significant evidentiary value,\u201d Hur wrote in the report.<\/p>\n
FBI agents contacted Zwonitzer for an interview and for records of his work ghostwriting two of Biden\u2019s memoirs, the report stated. Zwonitzer handed over near-verbatim transcripts and some audio recordings, but when reviewing the documents, investigators noticed that there were some transcripts with no corresponding audio, according to the report. Zwonitzer\u2019s attorneys told authorities that before the FBI contacted the writer, he had deleted some recordings of his conversations with Biden.<\/p>\n
The ghostwriter then turned over his computer and hard drive, and consented to a search. The FBI was able to recover the deleted files from a subfolder on the external hard drive labeled \u201caudio.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe considered whether to charge the ghostwriter with obstruction of justice, but we believe the evidence would be insufficient to obtain a conviction and therefore declined to prosecute him,\u201d Hur wrote, adding that Zwonitzer offered \u201cplausible, innocent\u201d reasons for his actions. \u201cWhile the ghostwriter admitted that he deleted the recordings after he learned of the special counsel\u2019s investigation, the evidence falls short of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that he intended to impede an investigation.<\/p>\n
Zwonitzer said that when he deleted the recordings, he didn\u2019t think they contained classified information and he didn\u2019t expect the investigation to involve him, according to the report. When he deleted the files after learning of the probe, investigators had not yet contacted him, the report stated.<\/p>\n
\u201cI simply took the audio files subfolder from both the G drive and my laptop and slid them into the trash,\u201d he told investigators, according to the report.<\/p>\n
Perry Stein and Devlin Barrett contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
President Biden trusted the ghostwriter behind his two memoirs so much that \u201cat least three times\u201d he read aloud to him passages from journals containing classified details of Obama-era deliberations, according to a special counsel report released Thursday. Federal investigators last year sought the recordings author Mark Zwonitzer produced during his meetings with Biden around […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":845,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}