House Panel advances resolution against Garland over Biden audio files

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agencies
17 May 2024 08:23

US Attorney General Merrick Garland refused to provide the Republican-led House committees with recordings from Special Counsel Robert Hur’s interview with Biden.

President Joe Biden, left, and Attorney General Merrick Garland, right, attend a memorial service during National Police Week ceremonies at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, May 15, 2024. (AP)

The US House Oversight Committee advanced a resolution to hold US Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress for defying a congressional subpoena seeking audio recordings related to US President Joe Biden's classified documents case.

The panel advanced the resolution in a 24-20 vote late Thursday night.

Biden refused to turn over audio of his questioning by investigators probing his handling of classified documents in an interview that led to accusations that the 81-year-old Democrat was mentally frail.

Earlier in the day, the House Judiciary Committee also advanced a contempt resolution against Garland. The measures are expected to eventually make their way to the full House floor for consideration.

Garland refused to provide the Republican-led House committees with recordings from Special Counsel Robert Hur’s interview with Biden in October as part of his investigation into the US President's mishandling of classified documents.

The Justice Department and White House counsel said in letters to two Republican House committee chairmen that Biden was asserting executive privilege over the recordings.

In February, Hur released a report on his year-long investigation into Biden's mishandling of classified documents, which concluded that although Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials, it was not worth initiating a criminal case against him because a jury may view him as "a sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory."

Republicans have spotlighted Hur's comments about Biden's memory, hoping to reignite the age issue for the incumbent ahead of an expected rematch against 77-year-old Republican Donald Trump in the November presidential election.

White House counsel Ed Siskel said Biden was claiming executive privilege over the recordings to protect the "integrity, effectiveness, and independence of the Department of Justice and its law enforcement investigations."

Judiciary Committee Republicans claimed the government's rejection of their demand was politically motivated to protect the president.

But the Justice Department has already released transcripts of the interviews and argues that Republicans want the tapes simply to use in campaign ads supporting Trump.

"The absence of a legitimate need for the audio recordings lays bare your likely goal – to chop them up, distort them, and use them for partisan political purposes," Siskel said in his letter to the committees.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan argued that "the transcripts alone are not sufficient evidence of the state of the president's memory, frankly, because the White House has a track record of altering the transcripts."