The Department of Justice on Monday was cleared to release audio recordings of former President Joe Biden's conversations with a ghostwriter after two legal obstacles were removed.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia dissolved a temporary injunction blocking disclosure in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by Mike Howell, a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation who is now president of the Oversight Project, a government watchdog.

Also, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan dismissed Biden's separate lawsuit seeking to block disclosure to the House Judiciary Committee after Biden voluntarily withdrew the case.

"Since 2024 the Committee has been seeking the tapes, and recommended holding Zwonitzer in Contempt of Congress after he failed to comply with our subpoena to produce them," the House Judiciary Committee wrote on X. "Thanks to the transparency of President [Donald] Trump and [Acting Attorney General] Todd Blanche at DOJ, the Committee has obtained the recordings of Mark Zwonitzer's interviews of Joe Biden."

The audio recordings are of Biden's 2016 and 2017 conversations with Zwonitzer, made while the two worked on Biden's memoir, "Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose."

Special counsel Robert Hur obtained the recordings while investigating Biden's handling of classified documents dating to his time as a senator and his two terms as vice president.

"These tapes never should have been hidden," Howell told Blaze News. "Special counsel Hur's investigation was a complete controlled demolition to let Biden off the hook. It's time to reopen matters that Biden and his enablers would prefer to remain closed."

Roughly 70 hours of recordings were shared with CBS News. The recordings were cited in Hur's 2024 report, which said Biden kept volumes of notes at his home containing classified information.

The House Judiciary Committee posted nearly three hours of audio on X. The Oversight Project also posted audio along with a 117-page transcript.

Recordings shared with CBS News include Biden describing to Zwonitzer potentially classified meetings, including "a big meeting with the CIA and everyone," "a big meeting down in the Situation Room," and "a long meeting where DOD brief ... POTUS."

In an Oct. 10, 2016, recording, he told Zwonitzer that he had notes of which the White House was not aware.

"I have extensive notes over this period of time. ... They didn't know I have this," he said.

Biden also said in a Feb. 16, 2017, recording that "I just found all the classified stuff downstairs" — a comment that Hur cited as evidence Biden had classified material in his Virginia rental home despite leaving office a month earlier. Hur called his tone "matter-of-fact" and said he might have quickly forgotten about the documents.

But Biden appears to be more cautious in some recordings, telling his ghostwriter about the "non-classified part of my discussion with POTUS" on Nov. 3, 2016, while he was still vice president.

Hur investigated whether Biden illegally retained and disclosed classified information and highlighted examples in his report, including Biden, then 75, showing Zwonitzer "classified notes from a National Security Council meeting" during the Obama administration.

But Hur concluded that DOJ would be unlikely to obtain a conviction, in part because a jury would view Biden as "a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory."