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

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

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

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 Garland recommended that Biden assert executive privilege. The Justice Department had previously given House Republicans transcripts of the interviews.

“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.”

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 is currently facing four separate criminal cases in which he has pleaded not guilty, did not meet with then-special counsel Roberto Müllerthe team during the investigation into Russian interference in 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 has called the agency’s decision to reopen the investigation just days before the 2016 election was “the determining factor” in his 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. O Independent lawyer status expired in 1999 and special councils now operate under different regulations.

In comments to the press the same week he called for Trump’s secret money trial “an atrocity,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said Biden was “using his authority to defend himself politically.” (Trump used the authority of his former office to avoid the trial in federal election interference charges arguing all the way to the Supreme Court that he is covered by presidential immunity, successfully delaying a test This should have been underway in March and would likely have resulted in a verdict by then.)

“President Biden apparently fears that the citizens of this country and everyone will listen to these tapes,” Johnson said. “They obviously confirm what the Special Counsel found and would probably cause, I suppose, in his opinion, such alarm among the American people that the president is using all his power to suppress his release.”

Johnson reached a very different point observation after the Mueller investigation ended five years ago in 2019, telling NPR that “it’s time to move on” and that “trying to redo” the special counsel’s investigation “would be a waste of time”, and pointing to the importance of Justice Department regulations on the release of classified information.

“There are current DOJ regulations that prohibit [then-Attorney General Bill Barr] of revealing confidential information for obvious reasons, secret grand jury information and other confidential information,” Johnson said then.

The House Oversight Committee was supposed to hold a hearing this morning to consider recommending contempt charges against Garland, but Trump’s trial took precedence over Biden’s investigation.

Several panel members made plans to show their loyalty to Trump by appearing in court today, forcing Comer to pull the plug on the 11 a.m. hearing and move it to 8 p.m. tonight. While Trump undoubtedly appreciates his presence as political validators, House members have no official role in the trial.

This article was originally published in NBCNews. with