The Department of Justice is withholding the audio from President Joe Biden‘s interview with former special counsel Robert Hur due to fears that it will be altered by artificial intelligence, according to a court filing.
CNN, the Heritage Foundation, and Judicial Watch, among others, have all been denied Freedom of Information Act requests for the audio and have subsequently filed suit against the Justice Department. In response, it issued a court filing Friday night to explain why it won’t release the audio from Hur’s interview with Biden.
“Disclosure of that record is unwarranted,” the filing reads. “Release of the audio recording would threaten critical law enforcement interests by chilling the potential cooperation of witnesses in current and future sensitive investigations. In addition, disclosure would constitute a significant invasion of privacy. … These privacy harms are amplified by the threat of malicious manipulation of audio files that has recently become much more acute.”
Deepfake audio is achievable among public figures who already have catalogs of content featuring their voices. Additionally, deepfakes could include slowing down audio or removing words in order to distort the intended meaning of the speaker.
According to the department, once the public is aware that the audio is released, it will encourage malicious actors to create distorted audio clips. Associate Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer filed an affidavit to express his concerns about releasing the audio.
“If the audio recording at issue here were released, that would exacerbate the foregoing concerns, because it would demonstrate to future witnesses that recordings of interviews may be released (and thus become highly public) even for investigations that result in no criminal charges,” Weinsheimer wrote.
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Biden’s competence was called into question by Hur, who referred to the president as “an elderly man with a poor memory.” Hur’s office interviewed Biden last year but found he did not have a “mental state of willfulness” and, therefore, was not worth charging over his handling of classified documents because “it would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him.”
Hur left his position as special counsel with the department in March. Just before he resigned, he addressed the House Judiciary Committee about his interview. This committee and the House Oversight Committee have since issued subpoenas for the audio, which have also gone unanswered.
