The Heritage Foundation's push for them traces to a February 2024 records request, and getting them out took a genuine court fight rather than one clean ruling. A federal district judge first sided against Biden's privacy argument in June; when Biden appealed, a divided three-judge D.C. Two months later, Biden pauses mid-thought to warn, "Some of this may be classified," before continuing to describe the material anyway. Beyond the classified material, the tapes catch Biden losing his train of thought, misplacing dates, and pausing at length to gather himself. The dispute revives a denial Biden made when the Hur report first broke in 2024, when he told reporters flatly that he had never shared classified material with his ghostwriter at all.