President Joe Biden worked so closely with the ghostwriter with whom he is accused of sharing classified secrets that he once declared that he’d trust the author with his life. Mark Zwonitzer worked with Biden on two memoirs, 2007’s “Promises to Keep” and “Promise Me, Dad,” which was published 10 years later. According to a report released Thursday by special counsel Robert Hur, Biden was sloppy in his handling of classified material found at his home and former office, and shared classified information contained in some of them with Zwonitzer while the two were working on the Biden’s second book.
Quick Read
- Close Collaboration: President Joe Biden and ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer worked closely on Biden’s memoirs, with Biden expressing high trust in Zwonitzer.
- Classified Material Handling: A special counsel’s report criticizes Biden for mishandling classified information and sharing it with Zwonitzer during the creation of Biden’s second book.
- No Charges: Despite the mishandling, the report concludes that no criminal charges are warranted against Biden or Zwonitzer.
- Obstruction Consideration: Zwonitzer was considered for obstruction charges due to destroying recordings after learning of the investigation but was not charged due to plausible explanations and cooperation.
- Zwonitzer’s Role: As Biden’s ghostwriter, Zwonitzer helped organize and compile Biden’s memoirs, drawing from Biden’s notebooks that contained classified information.
- Evidence Recovery: Despite deleting recordings, Zwonitzer provided transcripts, notes, and digital storage devices to investigators, enabling the recovery of most deleted content.
- Literary Connection: Biden’s admiration for the book “What It Takes” led him to collaborate with Zwonitzer, who had worked on the book as a researcher.
The Associated Press has the story:
The ghostwriter of Biden’s memoirs is in the center of classified docs probe
Newslooks- WASHINGTON (AP) —
President Joe Biden worked so closely with the ghostwriter with whom he is accused of sharing classified secrets that he once declared that he’d trust the author with his life.
Mark Zwonitzer worked with Biden on two memoirs, 2007’s “Promises to Keep” and “Promise Me, Dad,” which was published 10 years later. According to a report released Thursday by special counsel Robert Hur, Biden was sloppy in his handling of classified material found at his home and former office, and shared classified information contained in some of them with Zwonitzer while the two were working on the Biden’s second book.
Hur’s report says no criminal charges are warranted against Biden. It says his office considered charging Zwonitzer with obstruction of justice because the ghostwriter destroyed recordings of interviews he conducted with Biden while they worked on his second memoir together once he learned of the documents investigation. But Hur also said Zwonitzer offered “plausible, innocent reasons” for having done so and cooperated with investigators subsequently, meaning the evidence against him was likely “insufficient to obtain a conviction.”
Zwonitzer did not immediately return messages seeking comment on Thursday.
In an interview Biden conducted as part of the Audible audiobook version of “Promise Me, Dad,” Biden called Zwonitzer a “great, great guy” and said, “I trust him with my life.”
He added that Zwonitzer “helped me organize; that was his great asset to me.”
It may feel like less of one now.
Hur’s report says Biden saved notebooks from his time as vice president that contained classified information and used them to help Zwonitzer put together his memoir — sometimes reading from them verbatim for more than hour at a time. Biden did that, the report says, despite being aware from when he once suggested that Zwonitzer could be hired as historian for the Office of the Vice President, that the author did not have security clearance.
The report details one of the boxes recovered by federal investigators was labeled “mark Z,” and that one recorded conversation with Zwonitzer in 2017 had Biden saying that he’d “just found all the classified stuff downstairs” of a home he was then renting in Virginia.
Though the report concludes that the published finished product of “Promise Me, Dad” did not contain classified information, it says that Zwonitzer deleted recordings he made during his previous conservations with Biden after he learned about the special counsel’s probe.
But it also says that Zwonitzer offered explanations for his deletions and made available transcripts of the recordings. Additionally, he gave investigators his notes and the computer and external hard drive from which the recordings were removed, which allowed authorities to recover most of what had been deleted.
Biden is a well-known fan of “What It Takes,” Richard Ben Cramer’s exhaustive account of the 1988 Democratic and Republican presidential primaries. Biden was then a Delaware senator mounting his first White House run.
In 2006, when he wanted to begin work on what became his first memoir, Biden contacted Zwonitzer, who was Ben Cramer’s researcher and partner on “What it Takes.”
After opting not to run for president in 2015, Biden again contacted Zwonitzer and the two reunited to work on “Promise Me, Dad.”
