Biden Takes Steps to Block Release of Audio of His Confidential Documents Interview with Special Counsel Hur

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden has claimed executive privilege over audio recordings of his interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur, the Republican federal prosecutor who declined to recommend charges against the president over his handling of classified documents.

White House Counsel Ed Siskel notified Reps. James Comer, R-Ky., and Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, of the decision in a Letter On thursday. This came after Attorney General Merrick Garland recommended that Biden assert executive privilege. The Justice Department had previously provided transcripts of the interviews to House Republicans.

“It is a long-standing position of the executive branch held by administrations of both parties that an official who asserts the president’s claim of executive privilege cannot be prosecuted for criminal contempt of Congress,” wrote Carlos Felipe Uriarte, a Justice Department official , in a statement. Letter to Jordan of Ohio, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and to Comer of Kentucky, chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee.

Garland wrote separately Letter to Biden that the audio recordings of his interview “fall within the scope of executive privilege” and that turning them over to Congress “would create an unacceptable risk of undermining the Department’s ability to conduct similar high-profile criminal investigations – in particular, investigations where the voluntary cooperation of White House staff is extremely important.”

In comments to the press Thursday morning, Garland said the Justice Department “has done everything possible to ensure that committees get responses to their legitimate requests, but this is not one of them.”

Releasing audio of an interview, he said, “would harm our ability in the future to successfully pursue sensitive investigations,” saying it was part of an “unprecedented and, frankly, baseless series of attacks” on the Justice Department, including efforts to hold Garland in contempt for obtaining the audio.

“This request, this effort to use contempt as a method of obtaining our confidential law enforcement files is just the latest,” Garland said. “The effort to threaten to withdraw funds from our investigations and the way in which there are contributions to an environment that puts our agents and our prosecutors at risk are wrong. Look, the only thing I can do is keep doing the right thing. I will protect this building and its people.”

Hur wrote in his report that one reason not to bring a case against Biden is that the president would be sympathetic to a jury and could portray himself as an “elderly man with a poor memory.” Biden defended his abilities and Garland later said it would be “absurd” for him to try to block Hur’s language about the president’s memory.

House Republicans have used their bully pulpit to undermine the criminal cases of Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, and to attack Biden ahead of the 2024 election rematch.

Although a transcript of Biden’s interview has already been released, the Jan. 6 committee illustrated that audio and images can make a much stronger political impact with the American public than dense, written reports that few voters will actually read.

Media outlets, including NBC News, joined the push to release the audio under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), arguing that transcripts are no substitute for audio recordings.

John Fishwick, a former U.S. attorney under former President Barack Obama, told NBC News that the Justice Department “should not rely on a flimsy executive privilege argument to block the release of President Biden’s audio interviews with special counsel Hur” and that Biden and the judge The Department “should promote full transparency in the Hur investigation and release the audio recordings now.”

Trump, who currently faces four separate criminal cases in which he has pleaded not guilty, did not meet with then-Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team during the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, a decision that paid out for the former president. trump he said he was “fucked up” when he heard about Mueller’s appointment and said it would be the “worst thing that ever happened” to him. Publicly, Trump stated that he wanted to speak to Mueller, even saying that “superimpose” his lawyers, but he never sat down with investigators.

Trump’s 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton, spoke to the FBI during the investigation into the handling of classified documents. Clinton called the agency’s decision to reopen the investigation just days before the 2016 election “the determining factor” in her defeat to Trump.

In 1998, President Bill Clinton testified before a federal grand jury as part of the investigation into whether he lied under oath about his affair with Monica Lewinsky. What video it was made public by the House Judiciary Committee about a month later.

Then, as now, the White House argued that the video was being released only to embarrass the president. In that case, independent counsel Ken Starr voluntarily turned over the Clinton video to Congress. The independent counsel statute expired in 1999 and special counsels now operate under different regulations.