Justice Department considered charging Joe Biden's ghostwriter with obstruction of justice after he destroyed recordings of interviews: President said he trusts writer 'with my life'

• Report found author had ‘innocent’ reasons for destroying recordings
• READ MORE: Biden’s garage looked like a scene from ‘Hoarders’  

The Department of Justice considered charging President Joe Biden’s ghostwriter of his memoir with obstruction of justice after he destroyed recordings of his conversations with the president.

Special Counsel Robert Hur noted in his report released Thursday that Biden’s ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer deleted his recordings after he learned about the Justice Department’s investigation of Biden’s mishandling of classified documents.

The report noted that Zwonitzer, who helped Biden write his memoir ‘Promise Me, Dad,’ never held a security clearance and that Biden shared classified information with him by reading from his personal notes.

Biden’s memoir

‘At other times, however, Mr. Biden read his notes from classified meetings to Zwonitzer nearly word-for-word,’ the report noted, citing details of a Situation Room meeting at the White House in 2015.

‘[O]n February 16, 2017, after he was no longer vice president. Mr. Biden read portions of the same notebook entry aloud and nearly verbatim to Zwonitzer, including portions containing information that remains classified up to the Secret level,’ the report added.

Zwonitzer deleted the audio recordings, the report notes, but officials were able to recover most of them with forensic tools.

Agents also found details of ‘incriminating information’ against Biden in the author’s transcripts of the recordings. Special Counsel investigators ultimately decided against prosecuting Zwonitzer.

‘In his interviews, the ghostwriter offered plausible, innocent reasons for why he deleted the recordings,’ the report read.

At one point in the book-writing process, Biden told Zwonitzer that ‘I just found all the classified stuff downstairs’ when recalling his attempt to convince President Barack Obama not to send a surge of troops into Afghanistan. Biden was referring to the basement office of his Virginia home in 2017.

Biden famously opposed the administration’s recommendation for a surge of troops into Afghanistan as ‘outrageous’ according to his personal notes cited in the report.

Biden said to investigators he did not remember finding classified documents in his office.

FBI agents discovered the classified Afghanistan documents in a cardboard box in the garage of his home in Delaware in December 2022.

Agents found a binder containing copies of notecards and schedules for President Joe Biden during his time as vice president.

Agents found Joe Biden’s classified notes about the war in Afghanistan in his possession

U.S. President Joe Biden reacts as he delivers remarks at the White House in Washington, U.S., February 8, 2024.

Biden flatly denied sharing any classified information with Zwonitzer during a press conference at the White House on Thursday evening.

‘I did not share classified information. I did not share with my ghostwriter. I did not. Guarantee you did not,’ he replied when asked about it by reporters.

Biden praised Zwonitzer as a ‘great great guy’ in an interview with Mike Barnicle for the Audible version of his memoir.

‘I trust him with my life,’ Biden said.

Zwonitzer did not return a request for comment from Dailymail.com.

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