Special Counsel Robert Hur caused controversy earlier this year when he opted not to recommend charges against President Joe Biden over his handling of classified documents.

Part of Hur's investigation concerned interactions between Biden and ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer. While the Department of Justice (DOJ) previously said it did not have transcripts of their conversations, those files have just been found.

DOJ: 117 pages found "in the past few days"

According to National Review, that admission was made in a court filing submitted on Monday by DOJ lawyer Cameron Silverberg.

The DOJ has discovered transcripts of conversations between Biden and his ghostwriter that DOJ lawyers previously denied having, as the agency continues to stonewall FOIA requests and lawsuits demanding documents. | @jameslynch32 https://t.co/RBv3Mfdx6O

— National Review (@NRO) July 24, 2024

"In the past few days…the Department located six electronic files, consisting of a total of 117 pages, that appeared to be verbatim transcripts of a small subset of the Biden-Zwonitzer audio recordings created for the SCO by a court-reporting service," Silverberg wrote.

"Mr. Hur confirmed that the identified files were in fact transcripts of a subset of the Biden Zwonitzer audio recordings, created by a court-reporting service at the SCO's request," the filing continued.

DOJ previously said transcripts did not exist

"These transcripts were indeed the transcripts referred to in the Hur Report, though they were not cited in any of the Passages in Plaintiffs' FOIA request," it went on to add.

The Washington Examiner Review noted that Monday's filing is at odds with an earlier claim that no record of the transcripts existed.

"Unlike the case of the special counsel and his interviews with the president, we don't have some transcript that’s been created by the special counsel that we can attest to its accuracy," the earlier filing was quoted as saying.

The transcripts are the subject of a Freedom of Information Act request by the conservative Heritage Foundation, which has also filed a lawsuit to obtain audio recordings of Biden's interview with Hur.

Biden showed signs of cognitive decline during interview

The Heritage Foundation is being assisted in its lawsuit by Judicial Watch, whose president told the Examiner that he has never "seen a desperate effort like this to avoid disclosure."

In justifying his decision not to indict Biden, Hur indicated that the president showed signs of cognitive decline when being questioned.

As Fox News reported, the special counsel recalled how Biden was often "struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries."

"It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him—by then a former president well into his eighties—of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness," Hur added.