The ghostwriter for President Joe Biden's memoir reportedly told federal investigators he deleted many recordings of his conversations with Biden after a special counsel was appointed to investigate the commander in chief.
Citing a partial transcript of the interview, Axios reported that writer Mark Zwonitzer said he erased the recordings because he was afraid of being hacked.
Biden's transcribed conversations with Zwonitzer were among the most damaging evidence in special counsel Robert Hur's probe of Biden's handling of classified documents.
In his final report, Hur highlighted Biden telling Zwonitzer in February 2017 — just after he left office as vice president — that he "just found all the classified stuff downstairs."
"Evidence supports ... [Biden] was referring to the same marked classified documents about Afghanistan that FBI agents found in 2022 in his Delaware garage," Hur wrote.
In a July interview, Zwonitzer told investigators he had tried to delete the audio of all his conversations with Biden months earlier, Bloomberg News reported.
Zwonitzer said he erased files in the weeks after Hur was appointed in early January 2023, and told investigators that he didn't expect to be involved in the special counsel's investigation and that his motivation was fear of the recordings being stolen, Axios reported.
"I was very concerned about the possibility of being hacked. I was very concerned about the possibility of this audio spread all over the place," Zwonitzer said, explaining he had just finished an unrelated project, the outlet reported.
"I saved all the transcripts and getting rid of the audio is something ... I do as a ...rule anyway," he added.
Zwonitzer didn't respond to a request for comment from Axios.
Hur's investigators appeared skeptical of Zwonitzer's explanation in their two interviews of the writer, Axios reported.
"Look, the outside observer is going to look at this and say Mark Zwonitzer ... learned of the special counsel's investigation, saw this happening and then deleted all these audio recordings," an unidentified investigator told Zwonitzer, Axios reported.
"And I assume — and it's OK, I just need the truth on this one, but there's some truth in that, that was what was going on," he added, asking: "That was part of your motivation, at least something you were aware of when you did this?"
Zwonitzer replied: "I'm not going to say how much of the percentage it was of my motivation. I was aware that there was an investigation," Axios reported.
Zwonitzer also said no one from the president's team had reached out to him.
"I don't think anybody in his camp is aware that I am a part of this," he said in the July 2023 interview.
In his final report, Hur recommended not charging Zwonitzer because he "offered plausible, innocent reasons for why he deleted the recordings," Axios reported.