The Justice Department informed a federal judge it had located a partial transcript of President Joe Biden's interviews with his ghostwriter.
The DOJ previously denied it had the transcript, which played a role in special counsel Robert Hur's recently completed criminal investigation into Biden's handling of classified material.
In a court filing late Monday, DOJ attorneys told a federal judge that transcripts of Biden's interviews with Mark Zwonitzer had been located, Politico reported.
The filing came one day after Biden announced he was ending his reelection bid.
Last month, DOJ attorneys handling a Freedom of Information case told U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich that it would be very time-consuming to process other audio files containing Biden's interviews with Zwonitzer.
"We don't have some transcript that's been created by the special counsel that we can attest to its accuracy," DOJ lawyer Cameron Silverberg said at the June 18 hearing on a suit brought by the Heritage Foundation, Politico reported.
However, Silverberg said in a court filing Monday night the department "in the past few days" confirmed that Hur's office had received transcripts made of a portion of Biden's 2007-2017 discussions with Zwonitzer.
"In the past few days … the Department located six electronic files, consisting of a total of 117 pages, that appeared to be verbatim transcripts of a small subset of the Biden-Zwonitzer audio recordings created for the SCO by a court-reporting service," Silverberg wrote in the new filing.
The filing also revealed DOJ reached out to Hur to find out what materials the special counsel relied upon for key portions of his report.
Hur acknowledged relying on the Biden-Zwonitzer audio and Biden's handwritten notes pertaining to a memo about Afghanistan to compile his report.
Hur determined Biden mishandled classified information but the special counsel chose not to prosecute due to the 81-year-old president's failing cognitive state.
Late last month, House Republicans advanced a resolution that would hold Zwonitzer in contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over records related to Hur's investigation.
Previously, Republicans voted to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt for his refusal to turn over audio from the special counsel's interview with Biden.
The White House had blocked the release of the audio weeks earlier by invoking executive privilege. It said GOP lawmakers only wanted the recordings "to chop them up" and use them for political purposes.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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Charlie McCarthy, a writer/editor at Newsmax, has nearly 40 years of experience covering news, sports, and politics.
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