Joe Biden is heading to federal court in Washington D.C. to stop a tape recorder from speaking to the world. The former president sued the Department of Justice on Tuesday, desperate to block the release of private audio recordings and transcripts from his 2017 memoir interviews. The DOJ plans to hand the materials to the House Judiciary Committee and the Heritage Foundation on June 15. Biden’s legal team argues the move abandons "core tenets of American justice" by leaking private information.

Spokesperson TJ Ducklo told TIME that Biden only agreed to the tapes on the condition they "would not be made public." The tapes cover deeply personal conversations with a ghostwriter about his deceased son. It is a celebrity legal battle over the right to keep one's history behind a velvet rope. According to the filing, the department fought the Heritage Foundation’s request for the records until President Donald Trump took office. Now, the gates have been opened, and Biden is suing to shut them. The lawsuit asks the court to declare the committee’s request "pretextual and invalid." This is the ultimate status fight: a former president battling his own government to protect the sanctity of his private memoir. If the tapes are released, the private information of a global leader becomes public property. Biden is determined to ensure that his voice remains his own.