Biden's White House doctor declared him fit for duty and healthy as recently as early 2024.
That declaration just ran into 70 hours of audio Biden spent two years trying to bury.
What is on those tapes is now public – and the Democrats who spent years defending Biden are going to wish it wasn't.
Biden Cognitive Decline on Tape: Buffering Like a Dial-Up Internet Connection
On Monday, the Oversight Project released the recordings publicly after a federal court battle tied to Special Counsel Robert Hur's 2024 investigation into Biden's handling of classified documents.
The recordings are working sessions ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer made while Biden leafed through personal notebooks and recounted his years as Barack Obama's vice president – raw material for his 2017 memoir Promise Me, Dad.
The sessions span 2016 to 2017, up to four years before Democrats handed Biden their presidential nomination.
The Heritage Foundation had sought the tapes through a Freedom of Information Act request because Hur cited them directly in his report.
Biden's legal team fought to keep them sealed, arguing they contained private family matters.
A federal appeals court ruled against Biden on July 20 – and last Friday, he gave up and declined to seek further review.
Oversight Project President Mike Howell summed up what listeners are hearing: "These tapes have so many pauses and 'ums' that it sounds like Biden is buffering like a dial-up Internet connection."
At one point Biden trails off entirely.
"All right – what was I going to ask you? Something else … Uh … um. Oh gosh. I can't think of anything else," he says.
Biden also asks Zwonitzer to "hang on a second" while he studies his notes, then says: "Um … it's confusing me."
https://twitter.com/interstatejuche/status/2081864872074121675
Special Counsel Robert Hur reviewed these same recordings and described the sessions as "often painfully slow, with Mr. Biden struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries."
These were Biden's personal journals – documents he had written himself.
An April 2017 recording captures Biden unable to recall the names of two economic advisers he had worked with closely.
The Oversight Project reviewed the full recordings and reached a verdict: Biden "was already demonstrating significant cognitive decline" before those sessions ever began – in the first months after he walked out of the Obama White House.
"As we know occurred during his presidency, Biden was clearly experiencing good days and bad days as far back as 2017," the group said.
The classified material scattered through these sessions is a serious legal problem on its own – Biden warning Zwonitzer "some of this may be classified…so, be careful" while reading "nearly verbatim" from notebooks containing sensitive national security information.
But the cognitive evidence is the story that cannot be lawyered away.
Democrats Named Biden Their 2020 Nominee Four Years After These Memory Recordings
Democrats nominated Joe Biden for president in the summer of 2020.
The recordings that capture him losing his train of thought, unable to remember his own advisers, confounded by his own notes – those were already four years old.
After Biden's June 2024 debate collapse, an anonymous Democrat senator told Fox News: "The country saw [at the debate] what those of us who have had personal interactions with him have all known for the last 2½ years."
Two and a half years before the debate puts that senator's private knowledge at late 2021.
The tapes put the audible evidence at 2016.
While those recordings sat locked in a federal court battle – fought first by Biden's Justice Department, then by his private attorneys – Democrat after Democrat stood before cameras and told America there was nothing to see.
Sen. Chris Murphy said he had "seen him do this job at an absolutely exceptional level."
Josh Shapiro told voters to "stop worrying" about Biden's electability.
Pete Buttigieg praised him as a "focused and disciplined leader."
Murphy has since reversed course, telling Politico "there's no doubt about it" – Biden declined cognitively during his presidency.
Shapiro now admits he warned Biden privately about "shortcomings" while publicly telling Pennsylvania voters there was nothing to worry about.
Kamala Harris, Shapiro, and Buttigieg are all expected to run for president in 2028 – and the tapes just handed their opponents everything they need.
Howell connected it directly to the autopen scandal: "We now know what has been long assumed: the autopen scandal extends far back beyond just when Joe Biden 'ran' for president from his basement."
The Biden Classified Documents Cover-Up That Kept 2020 Voters in the Dark
Oversight Project VP of Litigation Jeff Clark called Biden's privacy argument "a massive misdirection play," noting the tapes are almost entirely about classified material and Biden's failing recall – not family.
What the court battle actually accomplished was keeping this audio away from American voters for one full presidential election cycle.
That debate shocked the country because most Americans had never heard Biden unscripted and unprotected.
The ghostwriter had.
Zwonitzer heard this in 2016 – then deleted his digital recordings once Hur was appointed, claiming he feared being hacked.
Clark told Fox News Digital that Merrick Garland's decision to give Biden a free pass must now be "reexamined from top to bottom."
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer has called the cover-up "one of the greatest scandals in our nation's history" and is now pursuing the senior advisers who were eyewitnesses to Biden's condition inside the White House.
The tapes are out.
The voters who went to the polls in November 2020 never got to hear them.
Sources:
- Matt Margolis, "The Biden Tapes Have Finally Been Released," PJ Media, July 27, 2026.
- Jennifer Van Laar, "Biden Ghostwriter Tapes, Transcripts Are Out," RedState, July 27, 2026.
- Cristina Laila, "Oversight Project Releases Recordings of Biden Interviews with Ghostwriter," The Gateway Pundit, July 27, 2026.
- Staff, "Biden's Classified Docs Narrative Crumbles Amid Release of Ghostwriter Tapes," Fox News Digital, July 27, 2026.
- Staff, "Anonymous Democratic Senator Says Everyone's Known for Years Biden Has Mental Lapses," Fox News, July 5, 2024.
- Press Release, "Chairman Comer Expands Investigation into Biden Mental Decline Cover-Up," House Oversight Committee, August 6, 2025.