After the Justice Department refused to act on the House’s contempt referral, House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Friday that he would go to federal court to force Attorney General Merrick Garland to follow through on an order to get audio recordings of President Joe Biden.
In a statement, Johnson said that he doesn’t agree with the DOJ’s ruling. He called it “another example of the two-tiered system of justice brought to us by the Biden Administration.”
“I will sign off on the contempt reports and send them to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia,” the Republican from Louisiana said. “We will also try to get Attorney General Garland’s subpoena to be seen in federal court.”
In an early Friday letter to Johnson, the DOJ said that it has a “longstanding” policy of not pursuing executive branch officials who keep information from Congress that is protected by executive privilege.
The announcement was expected after the House, mostly along party lines, found Garland guilty of contempt for not handing over audio from Biden’s interview as part of Robert Hur’s probe into classified documents.
The letter from the department’s top congressional liaison said, “Consistent with this longstanding position and uniform practice, the Department has determined that the responses by Attorney General Garland to the subpoenas issued by the Committees did not constitute a crime. As a result, the Department will not bring the congressional contempt citation before a grand jury or take any other action to prosecute the Attorney General.”
Republicans in Congress have said that letting people see the tapes would give more information, openness, and control over the investigation into a president who is still in office.
All but one Republican in the House agreed on Wednesday to hold Garland in contempt of Congress. That Republican was Rep. Dave Joyce of Ohio.
The Justice Department has said that it didn’t turn over the audio recordings of Biden’s interviews with Hur and his team because they wanted to protect this case and others like it. However, the interviews were transcribed and made public by the Justice Department.
Hur said that Biden came across in the talks “as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a bad memory.”
It was at that time that Biden made fun of Hur’s story and questions about his memory.
During a news conference after the report, Biden said, “Their job was to decide whether to move forward with charges in this case.” He added that Hur did not move forward with charges. “Any extraneous talk, they have no idea what they’re talking about.” It doesn’t belong in this report.
CNN has sued to get hearings of the interviews. In their April case, they said, “Without hearing any of the interview records, the press and public initially could not come to their conclusions about Hur’s characterization of Biden.” However, transcripts are not the same as records.
Republicans had turned “a serious congressional authority into a partisan weapon,” Garland said in a statement after the vote to hold him in contempt. He added that he was “deeply disappointed.”
Source: CNN
