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The House Judiciary Committee on Monday filed a lawsuit against Attorney General Merrick Garland to compel the Justice Department to turn over audio tapes of President Biden's interview with the special counsel who oversaw his classified documents case.
Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks during a news conference at the Department of Justice headquarters in Washington, Thursday, June 27, 2024. The Justice Department has charged nearly 200 people in a sweeping crackdown on health care fraud schemes nationwide with …The House Judiciary Committee on Monday filed a lawsuit against Attorney General Merrick Garland to compel the Justice Department to turn over audio tapes of President Biden’s interview with the special counsel who oversaw his classified documents case.
to hold Mr. Garland in contempt of Congress for failing to turn over the tapes, which the Judiciary Committee had subpoenaed. Mr. Biden asserted executive privilege over the tapes of his interview with special counsel Robert K. Hur, who investigated and decided not to charge Mr. Biden for mishandling classified documents after his stint as vice president.its leader, Mr. Garland, for contempt of Congress, citing its “longstanding position and uniform practice” not to intervene in disputes involving claims of executive privilege.asks the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to overrule the assertion of executive privilege and order Mr. Garland to produce the audio recordings of Mr. Hur’s interview with Mr. Biden, as well as a separate interview the special counsel conducted with Mark Zwonitzer, the ghostwriter for Mr. Biden’s 2017 memoir. The Justice Department has released a transcript of Mr. Hur’s interview with Mr. Biden, but House Republicans say they need the tapes to assess “verbal and nonverbal context.” That context, the committee argued, is especially important because Mr. Hur concluded in his final report declining to bring charges against Mr. Biden that a jury might be sympathetic toward the president because he came across as “a sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.” The Judiciary Committee argued in its lawsuit that it needed the interview tapes to determine whether Mr. Hur’s assessment was accurate as part of its impeachment inquiry into Mr. Biden. “The audio recordings, not the cold transcripts, are the best available evidence of how President Biden presented himself during the interview,” the panel said. The committee called the assertion of executive privilege over the tapes “frivolous,” arguing that the White House waived any potential privilege claims over the interview by releasing the transcript. “President Biden’s self-serving attempt to shield the audio recording of his interview with the Special Counsel while publicly releasing a transcript of that same interview represents an astonishing effort to expand the scope of executive privilege from a constitutional privilege safeguarding certain substantive communications to an amorphous privilege that can be molded to protect things like voice inflection, tone, and pace of speech,” the committee said. Some House Republicans want to go further in trying to compel Mr. Garland to turn over the tapes and have floated using a little-known congressional power called “inherent” contempt to arrest the attorney general until he complies. House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan told reporters last week that he is “fine with” Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna and other Republicans pushing for action on inherent contempt but that he believes the lawsuit will be successful. “We think our argument is strong. We think they’ve waived the privilege,” the Ohio Republican said. “The House is entitled — particularly when the full House has voted, the majority of the House has voted to enter an impeachment inquiry — we think we’re entitled to all the evidence … and that certainly includes audio tapes.”
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