The Republican-led House Judiciary Committee sued Attorney General Merrick Garland this Wednesday, requesting an injunction forcing the Justice Department to make public the audio tape of special counsel Robert Hur’s meeting with President Joe Biden.
The lawsuit also requests that the DOJ release transcripts of an interview that Hur did with Mark Zwonitzer, Biden’s ghostwriter. The Justice Department’s filing of a response to the case will be the next stage of the procedure.
A DOJ representative told the Washington Examiner in a statement, “The Department is studying the lawsuit and will reply in court at the appropriate time.”
In June, the House voted to find Garland in contempt of Congress, referring the matter to the DOJ for prosecution. To the ire of House Republicans, who threatened to take the issue to court, the department chose not to investigate the possibility of filing criminal charges against its boss.
House Republicans had subpoenaed Garland in February to provide him access to the audio recordings, and Garland had refused, leading to his contempt. The DOJ claims that the transcripts of all those interviews are sufficient for the Republicans’ impeachment investigation, and they have already been made public. In addition, the White House has mentioned executive privilege.
Republicans have maintained that in order to evaluate Hur’s probe into Biden’s handling of secret documents, audio tape is required. In his report, Hur stated that he decided not to charge Biden despite the fact that the president’s actions posed “severe threats to national security” because he thought a jury would judge him to be a “sympathetic, well-meaning elderly guy with a weak memory” and probably not convict him for this reason.
The Judiciary Committee claims that the audio recording would enable committee members to assess Biden’s manner of “presenting himself during the interview,” including tone, pace, and voice inflection. The committee is requesting that the court reject the “frivolous” and “self-serving” claim of executive privilege.
The lawsuit stated that “the greatest accessible evidence of how President Biden presented himself during the interview is the audio recordings, not the cold transcripts.” “The Committee, therefore, requires those tapes in order to evaluate the Special Counsel’s portrayal of the President, which he and White House attorneys have vehemently denied, and to make the final determination that President Biden ought not to face criminal charges.”
Politicizing the matter and requesting the audio tape for “Donald Trump’s campaign advertising” or using Biden’s stammer to “smear” him are two things that House Democrats have criticized Republicans for.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) has introduced an “inherent contempt” resolution, which the lower chamber could vote on to obtain the recording. Some Republican members have deemed her bill unneeded, while others believe it would pass if brought to the floor. Nevertheless, a vote on Luna’s resolution is unlikely to occur anytime soon, if at all, given that the House is in recess this week.
