Former U.S. President Joe Biden attends the dedication ceremony for the Barack Obama Presidential Center in John Lewis Plaza on June 18, 2026 in Chicago. (Scott Olson / Getty Images)
By C. Douglas Golden July 29, 2026 at 6:49am
If you’re one of those people who enjoys being vindicated over stuff that happened over half a decade ago that the media is just acknowledging, it’s been a pretty wonderful week.
The main story, of course, is the diaries of Dr. Anthony Fauci during the COVID-19 epidemic. As it should be; not only is the Fauch revealed as a fame-obsessed narcissist, he also dismissed the wet market origin theory well before he started calling everyone who dismissed that theory a conspiracy theorist.
And now we can all read them because apparently, he was dumb enough to write it all on a government computer, making the diaries government property. Turns out he may “represent science,” but does not represent common sense or even basic self-awareness.
This has shifted what would be the lead story in “turns out you were right a bunch of years ago, sorry about that” news during any other week — audio recordings of then-former Vice President Joe Biden sharing classified documents with his biographer in 2016 and 2017 — into an also-ran during what little coverage mainstream media gives these events, scant as it is.
(It’s practically as hard to find as the ethnicity and religious leanings of suspects who ram cars into large crowds of people in Western cities.)
But if you find it, the stuff those tapes is pretty damning.
Not only does it feature a doddering-sounding Biden years before he made a presidential run in which the media denied he was doddering, and made it through a presidency where the White House called footage of him doddering “cheap fakes,” it also includes Biden using the phrase, “I just found all the classified stuff downstairs.”
Should Joe Biden be prosecuted for mishandling classified documents and for turning them over to at least one individual without a security clearance?
So yeah, there’s that.
The tapes, released by Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee, were part of the writing process behind “Promise Me, Dad,” a 2017 book that served as both a reflection on the loss of his son Beau and a reintroduction to political life as he prepared for what seemed like an inevitable 2020 presidential run.
However, the talks with ghostwriter Marc Zwonitzer were often rambling, with Biden struggling to remember details and/or what the word “classified” means.
The U.K. Daily Mail reported that during “one of the sit-downs, Biden struggled to speak at all for several minutes, and only after he was prompted by” Zwonitzer, who mentioned that Iraq, Ukraine, and Central America issues “were chewing up a lot of your time.”
“Biden, in response, muttered quietly and struggled to string together complete or decipherable sentences. His first audible response detailed a discussion with Kevin McCarthy, who ‘it looked like was going to be speaker, or … the number two guy.’”
Corn Pop was a bad dude. Where’s Jackie? Huh?
There was one thing that Biden was sufficiently clear on, however, as the Mail noted:
‘The next thing I have here is classified,’ Biden said at one point.
‘Some of this may be classified …’ Biden can be heard telling Zwonitzer in another discussion.
‘It’s not marked classified, but …’ Biden said, his voice trailing off. No classified materials were published in the book, but the discussions, and the documents, were cited in an explosive 2024 special counsel report.
That special counsel report had to do with whether or not Biden should be charged with illegally keeping classified information from his time in Barack Obama’s White House. Special counsel Robert Hur concluded that he had, but that from his interviews, he had concluded that a jury would view him “as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
Guess what the Biden White House pushed back on after the report’s release?
REPORTER: “When can we talk to the president’s doctor and how come he hasn’t been asked to come out here and talk to us given the Hur report?”
KJP: “Special Counsel Hur is, as far as I remember, a Republican, a prosecutor. He’s not a medical doctor.”
REPORTER: “Can we talk to… pic.twitter.com/veO7HWE41R
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) February 12, 2024
And guess what we now know?
Audio recordings that Biden fought to keep private have been released: “I just found all the classified stuff downstairs.” pic.twitter.com/qbH2oED7CC
— TheBlaze (@theblaze) July 28, 2026
Audio recordings that former President Joe Biden fought for years to keep private have now been released. The roughly 70 hours of audio recordings, shared with CBS News, were cited in a 2024 special counsel’s report, which said Biden kept volumes of notes at his home that… pic.twitter.com/79sPnGfKvu
— CBS Evening News with Tony Dokoupil (@CBSEveningNews) July 27, 2026
If you want to sit through all two hours and 46 minutes of doddering, or just need to get yourself to sleep, here’s the House Judiciary Committee’s full release of the pertinent audio:
In 2016 and 2017, Joe Biden sat down with a ghostwriter to draft his memoir “Promise Me, Dad.”
Special Counsel Robert Hur obtained these tapes in his investigation of whether Joe Biden mishandled classified information, and released a report stating that Biden read classified… pic.twitter.com/yJ1kyOdjUU
— House Judiciary GOP 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 (@JudiciaryGOP) July 27, 2026
What’s funny is that, knowing all this, Donald Trump never sent anyone to Biden’s home to ransack it and paw through Jill’s underwear drawer the way Biden did to Trump and Melania. Some dictator, this.
But we won’t be talking about it. For one last time, it seems, Anthony Fauci has shoved a deserving man out of the spotlight. And if Biden’s not an “elderly man with a poor memory,” then prosecute the guy. There’s certainly enough reason in these tapes to go ahead with it.
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