Appeals Judge Blocks Release of Biden Recordings to Trump

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2:00Michael Popok:We got some breaking news. It's about Joe Biden's 70 hours of audio recordings of his musings and interview with his ghostwriter and whether those are public documents that should come out through the Heritage Foundation in Donald Trump's back pocket or vice versa, or they should forever be Joe Biden's personal musings. Joe Biden doesn't want them released because he had let his guard down when he talked to his biographer. And he doesn't need 70 hours of them sliced and diced by the Heritage Foundation, whose goal is not just to undermine the legacy of Joe Biden, but it's to crap all over the entire Democratic Party and undermine their legacy, their icons and the rest.

2:44Michael Popok:Heritage Foundation isn't doing it out of the public interest. They're doing it because they want to embarrass the opponents of Donald Trump. A three-judge panel, including a Trump-appointed judge, Judge Katsas, has ruled for now that they're going to grant a block, an administrative stay, until midnight on Monday, July 20th. Monday, July 20th is when they have given themselves that amount of time to decide on the merits, whether the emergency motion for injunction filed by Joe Biden will be granted or not. And of course, they don't want the audio recordings out there in the meantime, which would be the irreparable harm that Joe Biden has talked about.

3:30Michael Popok:I'm Michael Popok. Let's get to the bottom of this story, a story that I'm sure Joe Biden and the Democrats would like to go away. And thankfully, we've got a federal court, a pellet court that for now at least is doing the right thing to block their release until they can get their minds around the ultimate decision. You're on Legal AF. It is Friday. Hit the free subscribe button and vote for this kind of content. Three judges have been assigned to three-judge panel. Judge Srinivasan, Judge Katsas, and Judge Pan. Srinivasan, I believe, is Obama. Pan is Biden. Katsas is Trump. But there was no dissent.

4:12Michael Popok:This was a per curiam decision, meaning all three judges agreed to this stay. It's an 11-day stay until Monday the 20th. Here's what it reads, and then we'll talk about how we got here. Ordered on the court's own motion that an administrative injunction be entered and the Department of Justice be enjoined from releasing the contested Zwanitzer materials to the Heritage Foundation and Mike Howell until Monday at 11.59 p.m. The purpose of this administrative injunction is to give the court sufficient opportunity to consider the emergency motion that was filed by Joe Biden for an injunction pending appeal.

4:51Michael Popok:It should not be construed as something on the merits. So it's not on the merits, but it is a solid decision. Pan, Katzis, and the lead judge here, Srinivasan, the chief judge, actually, of that circuit. Srinivasan often considered to be along with Judge Pan, to people who would be elevated to the Supreme Court when the Democrats or if the Democrats take power again in 2028 and there is an opening. Administrative stays last for a finite amount of time. They are not on the merits. It's not exactly a tip of the hand, but it is an important part of this process. So what are we talking about when we talk about the Zwanitzer tapes?

5:37Michael Popok:It sounds like we're talking about the Zapruder films of the grassy knoll and JFK's assassination. Now, we have another guy named Z. Zwanitzer. He was the biographer for Joe Biden, and he recorded 70 hours of interviews that went into a book that Joe Biden published. The question for the special counsel Robert Herr, when he found out that the 70 hours existed, is that he wanted to review them to see if there were any classified information that were revealed. There weren't any. No one has come forward and says, from the government standpoint, that these things are classified. They just want to embarrass Joe Biden with failing memory.

6:17This was done right after his son, Beau Biden, died from brain cancer, who was the shining

6:23Michael Popok:light in his life. He thought he'd be president one day. It derailed Joe Biden running for president in 2016, instead of Hillary Clinton. That's what he really wanted to run when he was probably at the height of his powers. And so, you know, suffering from grief and things that go along with that. I'm sure there's parts of the 70 hours where Joe Biden is rambling or sounds maybe incoherent if taken out of context. Or maybe there are some word salad issues in there. And what they don't want is bad guys like the Heritage Foundation doing the bidding of Joe Biden, of Donald Trump, to release the audio tapes, chop them up, slice and dice them.

7:03Michael Popok:Because once they're out there, there's no control over what you can do with them. You could feed him through AI and make Joe Biden seem even more ridiculous or more incoherent at any given moment. And that's what they're afraid of. Now, they fought this out, Joe Biden did, in front of two judges. Judge Chutkin, where he brought his case and the ultimate case of the Freedom of Information Act, a suit brought by the Heritage Foundation and a guy named Mike Howell, also a bad guy. Here's Mike Howell talking about crazy things that the Heritage Foundation likes, like Project 2025. Play the clip. Mike Howell.

7:37Mike, what are you expecting to expose? Well, there is certainly a long track record already in the Biden administration of absolute destruction and damage to this country. We have a year of abject failure across many policy lines, domestic and foreign. So what we're aiming to do is our policymakers in the public at all different levels with the information and evidence and body of investigative research they need to actually enforce accountability moving forward. And so that's what we're going to do. We're running up hills. We're charging up them. We're going to be issuing FOIAs. We're going to be suing.

8:10We're going to be conducting investigations. We're going to get the information that is needed to tell the true story of all the damage inflicted. And I'll tell you what, I think a lot of it was on purpose, fool willing, no, the consequences that would happen if they went down these radical lines. But they did it anyways. And those people need to be held responsible. So that guy.

8:27Michael Popok:So they bring their Freedom of Information Act. They want to get their hands. And the only way they can get it is to argue that it's a public record or a public document. Now, they argue that it converted into a public document because Robert Herr, the special prosecutor, got a hold of it. And in his 330 pages, tearing apart Joe Biden and wrecking and basically ending his candidacy by calling him a well-meaning but doddering old man who has failed memory, which is why he's not going to indict him. I'm like, what? Anyway, that use of the review, they're arguing, converted them into a public record.

9:10Michael Popok:Joe Biden's arguing it's not a public record. It's private musings. It's like the Clinton tapes when Clinton took recordings for a biography he was going to do. And another group aligned with Donald Trump wanted to go after those tapes. The Supreme Court said, no, those are, we used to call them the socks tapes because he, not because his cat was named Socks, but Clinton kept them in a sock drawer. Similar analysis here, except it's sort of baked into Robert Herr's special counsel report. Let me play you a clip from Robert Herr when he testified. Remember when special counsels were allowed to deliver their findings and actually testify to Congress?

9:48Michael Popok:You probably don't remember that because Jack Smith was bound and gagged by this Trump-captured Department of Justice. But here's Robert Herr back in the days when we had adults running the Department of Justice. Play the clip. My task was to determine whether the president retained or disclosed national defense information willfully. That means knowingly and with the intent to do something the law forbids. I could not make that determination without assessing the president's state of mind. For that reason, I had to consider the president's memory and overall mental state and how a jury likely would perceive his memory and mental state in a criminal trial.

10:27These are the types of issues that prosecutors analyze every day. My assessment in the report about the relevance of the president's memory was necessary and accurate and fair. Most importantly, what I wrote is what I believe the evidence shows and what I expect jurors would perceive and believe. I did not sanitize my explanation, nor did I disparage the president unfairly. I explained to the attorney general my decision and the reasons for it. That's what I was required to do. All right.

11:00Michael Popok:So we're going to keep a close eye on this. The full briefing, I believe, is in. The three-judge panel is just giving themselves extra time to read the briefs, do their own research. Judges often do their own research with their law clerks and then render an opinion. Could be one page, could be 100 pages. I don't know. But they're giving themselves some time at least until, you know, which looks like another 10 days before they're going to issue the ruling. The parties don't have to do anything else. It is, you know, when the ruling is going to be issued. Now, there is an interesting element about Mark Zwanitzer, who is the biographer who recorded Joe Biden.

11:46Michael Popok:He didn't want to release the tapes. And when Robert Herr's people came a calling, he tried to erase them. There's no way around it. He did. I don't think Joe Biden told him to. I think he did it on his own. He panicked and he didn't want to turn them over. He felt like they were privileged and confidential with his client, his subject. And he got caught. You know, it's not hard to figure out when somebody tries to erase tapes. And he was threatened with indictment himself. And he cooperated with Robert Herr, avoided indictment. You know, they published that book ultimately, but you sort of got that extra salacious aspect of these tapes and those items.

12:24Michael Popok:But we'll follow it, if not here, on Legal AF Substack. Come over to Legal AF Substack. You can read the order. As I get more information, I may do it on a live right over on Legal AF Substack. Now's a great time. We're running a sale. 52 % off our annual membership for our listeners. Legal AF Substack. Until my next report, I'm Michael Popak. Popak here. When life changes in an instant because of an injury or the bad acts of another, you need fighters in your corner. The Popak firm is dedicated to helping the injured and their families get justice and the money they deserve. And we don't back down.

13:01Michael Popok:Contact us today and let's start your fight for justice together.