DOJ again opposes release of 'properly withheld' Joe Biden audiotapes by warning of 'deepfakes', 'privacy harms' [View all]
Source: Law & Crime
Jul 19th, 2024, 9:28 am
The U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday told a federal judge that combined efforts by two conservative groups and a coalition of mainstream media organizations to obtain “properly withheld” audiotapes of President Joe Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit should fail for numerous reasons, including that the threat of “deepfakes” and “privacy harms” to an uncharged individual are real and that forcing disclosure “would create a perverse incentive” against executive branch cooperation with Congress.
On the one hand, DOJ disputed that there is “any meaningful countervailing public benefit” to disclose the recordings given that a transcript of the interview was released and Hur testified before Congress about his report and non-charging recommendation for willful retainment and disclosure of “classified materials,” but on the other hand DOJ acknowledged that the the audiotapes contain “new information not contained in the written transcript,” namely the “sound, tone, and pacing” of Biden’s answers (i.e., the “non-lexical aspects” of the tapes).
DOJ is asking U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, a Donald Trump appointee, to grant summary judgment against the Heritage Foundation, Judicial Watch, and a media coalition, composed of CNN, ABC, The Associated Press, CBS News, The Wall Street Journal, NBC, Reuters, and others, by arguing that Biden’s “privacy interests” outweigh the “public interest” in releasing the tapes under FOIA. Here are some of the DOJ’s main arguments.
The audiotapes of the five-hour Biden interview with Hur was “properly withheld pursuant to multiple statutory exemptions,” in part, because releasing the tapes would interfere with “pending” law enforcement investigations.
Read more: https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/would-create-a-perverse-incentive-doj-again-opposes-release-of-properly-withheld-joe-biden-audiotapes-by-warning-of-deepfakes-privacy-harms-to-uncharged-individual/
Full headline: ‘Would create a perverse incentive’: DOJ again opposes release of ‘properly withheld’ Joe Biden audiotapes by warning of ‘deepfakes’, ‘privacy harms’ to uncharged individual
Link to FILING (PDF) - https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24883858/doj-biden.pdf
= new reply since forum marked as read