Members of the House Judiciary and Oversight committees voted along party lines Thursday to advance a resolution holding Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress over his refusal to comply with a subpoena for audio recordings of President Biden’s October interviews with former Special Counsel Robert Hur.
The Judiciary Committee approved the contempt measure Thursday afternoon, and the Oversight Committee passed it after a contentious late-night hearing, during which some members took shots at each other’s physical appearances.
The resolution will now head to the full House of Representatives for a vote.
Biden, 81, blocked the release of more than five hours of recordings from his two-day sitdown with Hur in the classified documents probe, asserting executive privilege at the behest of the AG earlier in the day.
The Justice Department and the White House cited fears that the release of the recordings would chill future cooperation from witnesses and that Republicans will use the tapes to take political shots at Biden.
In March, the DOJ provided Congress with a transcript of Hur’s Oct. 8 and Oct. 9 interviews with the president, which showed the commander in chief forgetting the year his son Beau Biden died of brain cancer and the year Donald Trump was elected president.
The DOJ has argued that it complied with a February congressional subpoena by releasing the transcript and other materials related to the Biden classified documents investigation.
Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and James Comer (R-Ky.), the chairmen of the House Judiciary and Oversight committees, have said the recordings are critical to their investigations into Biden’s “willful retention of classified documents and his fitness to be President of the United States.”
“The transcript of the interview was released months ago,” Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.), a member of the Judiciary panel, said Thursday. “There’s no reason for AG Garland to withhold the audio or for Biden to invoke executive privilege to keep the tapes hidden from the public.”“What is so damning in the audio that this administration is afraid to release them?” she added.
Former Attorneys General Eric Holder and Bill Barr were held in contempt of Congress in 2012 and 2019, respectively, but neither were charged by the Justice Department, which they oversaw.
Similarly, Garland is likely to ignore any contempt resolution that House Republicans pass.
Hur, a former Trump-appointed Maryland US Attorney, submitted his findings about Biden’s handling of classified information in early February.
The bombshell 388-page report noted there was evidence that the commander in chief “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials,” but Hur’s team concluded there wasn’t enough to prove it “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Hur also expressed concern that a jury would perceive the oldest president in US history as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”