The House GOP’s effort to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland accountable for contempt of Congress is in limbo, with Republicans unsure whether they have the votes to pass the measure.
Last week, two committees easily passed resolutions to censure Garland, and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has since projected confidence, saying he expects the measure to pass “easily” once lawmakers return of the week-long Memorial Day recess.
But a source familiar with the behind-the-scenes discussions said there are at least two Republican members who have said privately they will not vote for the measure.
That’s a problem given the slim Republican majority in the House, which leaves Republicans only able to pass bills with one or two defections if Democrats are unified.
The leadership was winning Garland’s vote this week when some GOP members suggested some of their colleagues were not yet on board.
“We won’t do it unless we know we can pass it,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) told The Hill, adding that “there is more than one” fellow Republican who has reservations.
He said the dynamic could change during the break as “people figure out how to get comfortable with it.”
Rep. Dan Bishop (RN.C.) said some members can be “soft” on the issue.
“If they have problems, they are from overwhelming people, not from me,” he said when asked about the timing of the vote.
The fact that the House did not vote on the Garland issue last week was notable.
Johnson called the timing of the vote a “calendar issue,” and while a delay is not unheard of, leadership typically schedules votes on such matters while there is still momentum coming from the committee.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (Md.), the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, said matters were complicated by the turbulent May 15 oversight meeting to consider the matter, which devolved into chaos with a long bar side about the possibility of censuring Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) after commenting on Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s (D-Texas) use of false eyelashes.
“Some of the members on the other side were saying that Chairman Comer presided over so much chaos and dysfunction in our committee that they lost track of what they were doing there,” Raskin said.
“I mean, the whole country was looking at Marjorie Taylor Greene talking about false eyelashes, but no one was focused on her bizarre claim that the Attorney General of the United States has contempt for Congress.”
GOP lawmakers made a confusing case about the need to hold Garland in contempt after he refused to turn over audio recordings of President Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur.
Lawmakers already have a transcript of the interview, and on the eve of the committee meetings, Biden claimed executive privilege over the tapes.
Impeachment investigators have claimed that the recording is an important part of their investigation, even though the transcript makes clear that the topics of their impeachment investigation were not addressed in the course of a two-day interview centered squarely on how the classified documents ended up in the Biden’s home and a previous office.
Some of the more moderate members of the Republican Party have said they see no connection between the tapes and the impeachment investigation, although they also argue that Garland should turn over the tapes.
Rep. Mike Lawler (RN.Y.), a Democratic target in this fall’s elections, was evasive about how he would vote while also criticizing Garland.
“They are not tied down. They are two different issues,” he said of impeachment and the tapes.
“The Department of Justice has the responsibility to comply with lawful subpoenas. You can’t pick and choose which ones are legal,” he said, telling reporters “we’ll see” when asked about his vote.
Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who also represents a swing district, called it an important election year issue.
“We have a right to have that tape, in conclusion,” he said, responding “not really” when asked if he had seen the audio related to the impeachment investigation.
He said voters should be able to listen to the tapes, given Hur’s comments about Biden’s mental acuity and observations that jurors may see him as “a nice, well-intentioned elderly man with a poor memory.”
“The prosecutor made the decision not to prosecute because he said he was not mentally prepared for trial – I’m using my own words. So we should know what’s on that tape because that’s an important thing. We have an election going on,” Bacon said.
That’s one of the main concerns of Democrats, who argue that the Republican Party just wants ribbons to be cut and cut on campaign commercials.
“They want the audiotape, and this is obviously for political TV commercials,” Raskin said Thursday.
Garland defended his decision at a news conference Thursday, saying he took “extraordinary steps” to meet Congress’s request.
“I released Mr. Hur’s full, unredacted report, we allowed Mr. Hur to testify for more than five hours about everything that happened in connection with his investigation, and we provided the transcripts of the interviews in which the committee is interested,” — said Garland.
“But on the other hand, the President of the United States exercised executive privilege to protect the Justice Department’s ability in future investigations to obtain cooperation in high-profile cases, particularly involving the White House. My job is to protect the Justice Department’s ability to conduct these investigations, my job is to protect the rule of law, and that’s what I’m doing.”
If leadership brings the contempt resolution to the floor when it returns, it will happen just days after Garland’s June 4 testimony before the House Judiciary Committee.
Many in the Republican Party are eager to vote, even though the chairmen of the two committees leading the effort — the House Oversight and Judiciary committees — have been unclear about the timing.
House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) told reporters Thursday that he had received no guarantees about the timing of any vote, but said he “assumed[d] he will fall to the ground.”
And House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said he expected a vote soon after the recess.
“The case is as compelling as it sounds. So I’m all for doing that. And I think that will happen as soon as we get back,” he told The Hill.
“I’m in favor of doing this as quickly as possible.”
Mychael Schnell contributed.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
