House impeachment investigators have threatened to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress unless he hands over the recordings of special counsel Robert Hur’s interviews with President Joe Biden and his ghostwriter.
The attorney general has thus far failed to provide the recordings in defiance of two subpoenas issued by Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and James Comer (R-Ky.), chairmen of the House Judiciary and Oversight and Accountability committees.
On April 15, the Republicans warned Mr. Garland that his response to those subpoenas “remains inadequate,” and accused him of stonewalling to protect the president from political embarrassment.
“Your refusal to comply with the subpoena’s legal obligation appears to be yet another unfortunate example of the Department refusing to abide by the same standards it requires of other Americans,” the congressmen wrote in a letter first obtained by the Daily Caller.
“If the Department continues to withhold materials responsive to the Committees’ subpoenas—namely, the audio recordings of Special Counsel Hur’s interviews with President Biden and Mr. [Mark] Zwonitzer—we will have no choice but to invoke contempt of Congress proceedings,” they added.
In their latest correspondence, the chairmen noted that audio recordings are “materially different” from transcripts and offer unique insight—such as vocal tone, inflection, and other verbal cues—that can’t be conveyed via text.
“Where audio recordings and transcripts diverge, because of ‘inflection in a speaker’s voice or by inaccuracies in the transcript,’ the audio recordings, not the transcripts, control. The Committees’ impeachment inquiry as well as its oversight efforts will suffer without these audio recordings,” they added.
‘Complete Confidence’
News of the Republicans’ letter coincided with Mr. Garland’s April 16 testimony before the House Appropriations Committee on the president’s 2025 Justice Department budget request.During the hearing, he defended his continued noncompliance with the subpoenas, holding that it was “longstanding practice” for his department to keep recordings of witness interviews confidential “to not chill future investigations.”
“Confidential, but you provided copies to the White House?” Rep. Ben Cline (R-Va.) countered.
Moments before, Mr. Garland had confirmed as much, though he added that he didn’t know the extent of what was provided.
“This is the witness. Witnesses—,” he began to explain. But Mr. Cline interjected to ask if it was normal for the Justice Department to allow witnesses to access the recordings of their interviews.
“Sometimes we do, and sometimes we don’t,” Mr. Garland replied. But in this case, he said, there were extenuating circumstances due to “privileges with respect to national security” matters discussed in the recordings.
During another line of questioning, the attorney general was asked to speak about President Biden’s mental fitness, given Mr. Hur’s depiction of him as an “elderly man with a poor memory.”
Declining to comment on the special counsel’s report, Mr. Garland said his own observations had given him “complete confidence” in the president.
“I have watched him expertly guide meetings of staff and Cabinet members on issues of foreign affairs and military strategy and policy in this incredibly complex world in which we now face, and in which he has been decisive—decisive in instructions to the staff, and decisive in making the decisions necessary to protect the country,” he said.
“Likewise, with respect to domestic policy discussions, these are intricate, complicated questions that he has guided all of us through in order to reach results that are helpful and important and beneficial to the American people. I could not have more confidence in the president.”
Although Mr. Hur ultimately decided not to prosecute President Biden, one of his stated reasons for not doing so was that he doubted a jury would convict someone who comes across as a “well-meaning, elderly man” with diminished faculties.
That reasoning has only exacerbated widespread concerns about the president’s mental fitness for office. And as he has yet to commit to any presidential debates, those concerns are likely to continue to cast a cloud over his reelection bid.
