WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden worked so closely with the ghostwriter with whom he is accused of sharing classified secrets that he once declared he would trust the author with his life.
Mark Zwonitzer worked with Biden on two memoirs, 2007’s “Promises to Keep” and “Promise Me, Dad,” which were published a decade later. Biden was sloppy in his handling of classified documents, according to a report released Thursday by special counsel Robert Hur. found materials in his home and former office, and shared classified information in some of them with Zwonitzer as the two worked on Biden’s second book.
According to Hur’s report, 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 were working together on his second memoir after learning of the document investigation. But Hur also said Zwonitzer provided “plausible, innocent reasons” for having done so and then cooperated with investigators, meaning the evidence against him was likely “insufficient to secure a conviction.”
Zwonitzer did not immediately return messages seeking comment 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 for me.”
It may feel like less now.
Hur’s report says Biden kept 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 an hour. Biden did so, the report says, despite being aware from the moment he once suggested that Zwonitzer could be hired as a historian for the vice president’s office that the author did not have a security clearance.
The report details that one of the boxes recovered by federal investigators was labeled “mark Z,” and that during a recorded conversation with Zwonitzer in 2017, Biden said he “just found all the classified stuff downstairs” from a house he was renting at the time . in Virginia.
While the report concludes that the published final product of “Promise Me, Dad” did not contain classified information, it says Zwonitzer deleted recordings he made during his previous conversations with Biden after learning of the special counsel’s investigation.
But it also says Zwonitzer provided explanations for his deletions and made transcripts of the recordings available. In addition, he gave investigators his notes and the computer and external hard drive from which the recordings had been deleted, allowing authorities to recover most of what had been deleted.
Biden is a noted fan of “What It Takes,” Richard Ben Cramer’s comprehensive account of the 1988 Democratic and Republican presidential elections, when Biden was a senator from Delaware making his first run for the White House.
In 2006, when he wanted to start working on what would become his first memoir, Biden contacted Zwonitzer, Ben Cramer’s researcher and partner on “What it Takes.”
After choosing not to run for president in 2015, Biden contacted Zwonitzer again and the two reunited to work on “Promise Me, Dad.”