Former President Joe Biden sued the Justice Department on Tuesday, urging a federal judge to block the release of audio recordings and transcripts of his private conversations with the ghostwriter of his 2017 memoir.

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The suit stems from a 2024 Freedom of Information Act request by the conservative Heritage Foundation, which later filed its own lawsuit to obtain Biden’s remarks to Mark Zwonitzer when they were writing “Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose.”

The Justice Department had withheld the sought-after materials, arguing they were exempt from disclosure. But during President Donald Trump’s second term, Biden’s attorney Amy Jeffress writes in Tuesday’s lawsuit in U.S. District Court for Washington D.C., “the Department has reversed that position.”

In February, Jeffress writes, “without any formal explanation for its about-face, the Department notified President Biden of its intention to release the audio recordings and transcripts to the plaintiffs in the FOIA Action.”

Months later, on May 5, “the Office of the Deputy Attorney General informed President Biden, through counsel, that the Department had made a final decision to release the materials, with limited redactions, to the Heritage Plaintiffs and to Congress on June 15,” Biden’s lawsuit says.

In “President Biden’s conversations with Zwonitzer and, ultimately, in his memoir, he recounted the year of his life that began during the Thanksgiving holiday in 2014,” Jeffress writes. “That year was among the most consequential of President Biden’s political life and the most painful of his personal life.”

Biden argues that such personal information is exempt from a disclosure under FOIA laws.

“Every American, including a sitting or former Vice President, has a right to privacy in the personal conversations he has within his own home,” Jeffress wrote in the lawsuit.

The Heritage Foundation sought all records that then-special counsel Robert Hur relied on to write particular passages of a 2023 report on Biden’s handling of classified documents that described him as “painfully slow, with Mr. Biden struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries.”

The audio of Hur interviewing Biden about the classified documents that remained in his possession after he was vice president confirmed memory lapses that White House officials denied at the time. Hur declined to criminally charge Biden.

The Justice Department and Zwonitzer did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Trump weighed in on the lawsuit on Truth Social, calling Biden “a Crooked Politician.”

Without court intervention, the materials will be released June 15.

South Carolina lawmakers dealt President Trump’s national redistricting effort a blow Tuesday when the state Senate voted against redistricting there after three weeks of rushed hearings and long debate.

Trump had been pushing state Republicans to redraw voting lines so they could flip a seat currently held by Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn. It would have made all the state’s seven congressional districts lean Republican and it would have extended the GOP lead in the national redistricting race, already netting them around nine more seats in the U.S. House.

Early voting in the June 9 primary had started Tuesday morning and was one factor some Republican senators cited for opposing the redistricting, which had dragged on through weeks of on-and-off debate.

A move to bring the bill to a vote failed in the Senate when 12 Republicans joined 12 Democrats on a key procedural vote to block the 26 votes needed to end debate and bring up a vote on the bill. A second procedural vote fell even more short.

The state senate is not up for election this year

Several Republicans moved to the opposition saying that changing the map could disenfranchise some voters. Around 26,000 cast ballots within the first several hours of polls opening, putting Tuesday on track to break early primary voting records.

Republican state Sen. Richard Cash echoed that concern from the floor Tuesday and said time had run out.

“Voting has begun, it is time to conclude the matter,” Cash said. “I know there’s going to be a lot of anger and frustration that we did not get the job done. I get it. Many of us are also frustrated and disappointed at what is a very unsatisfying outcome.”

Unlike members of the House, senators are not up for reelection this year and that could give them some insulation from pressure from Trump, who generated primary challenges against Republicans elsewhere for opposing redistricting.

Earlier Tuesday, Clyburn cast his ballot early in Orangeburg, a city 45 miles southeast of Columbia, and told reporters he was set to run in whatever district they draw him into. “I am embarrassed that so many people in our legislature will allow strangers in Washington to tell them what to do, when to do it, and how to do it,” Clyburn said.

Trump and Republicans still hold an advantage in the redistricting battle

Overall, Trump and the Republicans have gained in the unprecedented, mid-decade redistricting push he started. Republicans hold just a few-seats advantage in the House and the party in the White House usually loses seats in midterms. Usually, states redistrict at the start of the decade after the census count.

Redistricting across the country has given Republicans an advantage in about 15 more seats to the Democrats’ six That would net the Republicans about nine seats, while some court challenges remain that could alter that figure.

Trump got Texas Republicans to redistrict last summer. California Democrats, backed by a public vote, countered that. But since then it’s been mostly Republicans’ gains as they control more legislatures and many Democratic-led states are constrained by laws against gerrymandering.

South Carolina Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, who fielded several calls from Trump, was one of those Republicans opposing the redistricting. He said that unlike other southern states that rushed to redistrict, South Carolina’s districts did not fall under a recent Supreme Court ruling weakening voting rights for minorities.

Also on Tuesday, a federal court temporarily blocked the redistricting plan Alabama lawmakers had approved to flip a Democratic-held seat there. The court ruling is expected to be challenged at the U.S. Supreme Court,which has earlier backed the redistricting plan.