WASHINGTON – The Republican-led House is expected to vote on Wednesday on holding Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress.
At issue is Garland’s failure to turn over the special counsel’s audio Roberto Hurinterview with the president Joe Biden about your handling of confidential documents. Republicans demanded the audio after Hur declined to prosecute Biden, in part because a jury might sympathize with him as a “elderly man with poor memory.”
Last month, the House Judiciary and Oversight committees approved a report recommending that the House hold Garland in contempt for defying congressional subpoenas regarding the audio recording. And on Tuesday, the GOP-controlled Rules Committee voted along party lines to send the contempt resolution to the Chamber plenary.
“This is not a complicated issue: the executive branch and its agencies, including the Department of Justice, are not above Congress’ right to oversee those agencies,” said Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky. , to the Rules Committee. “We, as members of the Chamber of Deputies, have a duty to ensure that Congressional subpoenas are fully complied with by those who received them – people, companies and especially the federal government.”
Democrats countered this the full transcript of Biden’s interview it has already been released to the public and they warned that Republicans could manipulate the audio. Representative Jerry Nadler of New York, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said Republicans are attacking Garland after failing to present sufficient evidence to impeach Biden.
“What do our Republican friends do when an investigation fails? Simply put, they engage in fantasies. That’s what they’re doing here today. Unable to discover any wrongdoing on the part of the president, they have now turned their attention to the attorney general,” Nadler said.
“This is not really a political disagreement with the DOJ. This is about nurturing the MAGA base after 18 months of investigations that produced failure after failure,” continued Nadler. “This contempt resolution will do little other than tarnish the reputation of Merrick Garland, who will continue to be a good and decent public servant no matter what Republicans say about him today.”
The plenary vote in the Chamber will be difficult, given the small majority of the Republican Party. Even though Rep. Vince Fong, R-Calif., was sworn in last week to fill the vacancy left by former Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s resignation, Republicans can only afford two defections from the GOP on any given vote. Just three negative votes from the Republican Party would kill the contempt effort.
But House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and his leadership team feel confident enough about their whip count to move to the floor. A handful of vulnerable Republicans, including Reps. Mike Lawler and Marc Molinaro of New York, have said they will vote yes. Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., another top Democratic target in November, expressed reluctance about the snub but said he too will support it, arguing that the public deserves to hear the audio.
“I wish this could be resolved without a contempt vote. But regardless, the Attorney General owes the American people the audio recording. When Special Prosecutor Hur showed that President Biden intentionally kept confidential information in his home and garage, then the comparisons to what the DOJ is prosecuting President Trump become more similar,” Bacon said in a statement.
“Trump is being sued, but Hur claims President Biden is too old and has a bad memory to be brought to court. This is a very significant statement to make regarding our current president and the Democratic candidate,” Bacon added. “Citizens deserve to evaluate this for themselves.”
Even if Wednesday’s vote is successful, it is largely a political exercise. Biden and his administration asserted executive privilege in refusing to turn over the audio, all but eliminating the possibility of Garland being prosecuted for ignoring the subpoenas. It is also unprecedented for Justice Department prosecutors to pursue the head of their agency over a contempt issue.
The House voted to detain then-President Donald Trump’s attorney general, William Barrin contempt of Congress in 2019, while holding Barack Obama’s AG, Eric Holder, in contempt in 2012 for his refusal to turn over documents related to the Fast and Furious Probe. Neither was prosecuted.
This week’s contempt vote is just the latest effort by Republicans to portray a “two-tier” judicial system — one that criminally prosecutes and convicts Trump but lets Biden off the hook. House Republicans protested what they consider to be the “armamentization” of the government and the judicial system against Trump and his allies, even forming a special weapons commission to investigate. Meanwhile, on Tuesday, the Justice Department secured the conviction of the president’s son Hunter Biden on gun chargesand the Department of Justice is leading prosecutions against two Democratic members of Congress over bribery allegations.
About a year ago, a federal grand jury indicted Trump on dozens of criminal charges related to his handling of classified documents after his presidency.
But on February 8, Hur announced that, after a month-long investigation, he would refuse to prosecute Biden for handling confidential documents. Hur said Biden’s practices of withholding and releasing classified material after he became vice president “present serious national security risks.” But he explained that he did not press charges because it would be difficult to get a jury to convict him – “then a former president in his eighties – of a serious crime that requires a single-minded state of mind.”
Garland testified before the House Judiciary Committee last week that he had provided the panel with Hur’s report, allowed Hur to testify “for more than five hours” and “went beyond precedent” to provide the committee with transcripts of Hur’s interview. Biden.
But Garland argued that turning over the audio recording “would chill cooperation with the department in future investigations” and “could influence witnesses’ responses if they thought audio of their police interviews would be broadcast to Congress and the public.”
Garland went on to condemn the contempt campaign, calling it “just the latest in a long line of attacks on the work of the Justice Department.”
“This has been accompanied by threats to defund specific department investigations, most recently the special counsel’s case against the former president. This comes along with false allegations that a jury verdict in a state trial conducted by a local prosecutor was somehow controlled by the Department of Justice,” Garland continued, referring to the New York silences money case against Trump. “This conspiracy theory is an attack on the judicial process itself.”
This article was originally published in NBCNews. with
