House Republicans Hold AG Merrick Garland in Contempt for Withholding Biden–Hur Interview Audio

House Republicans voted on Wednesday to hold U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress after the Justice Department refused to turn over the audio from President Joe Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur.

House lawmakers voted 216–207 on the Garland contempt resolution, with one Republican representative, Dave Joyce of Ohio, joining Democrats in voting against it. Eight members did not vote on the measure.

The House Oversight and Judiciary committees advanced contempt resolutions last month because the Justice Department decided not to comply with a congressional subpoena for the audio.

“It is deeply disappointing that this House of Representatives has turned a serious congressional authority into a partisan weapon. Today’s vote disregards the constitutional separation of powers, the Justice Department’s need to protect its investigations, and the substantial amount of information we have provided to the Committees,” Garland said in a statement.

“I will always stand up for this Department, its employees, and its vital mission to defend our democracy.”

Contempt of Congress is a recommendation that a witness be prosecuted for failing to comply with a subpoena. Congressional investigators can use the threat of contempt to pressure a witness into compliance if they are facing resistance.

The Justice Department is tasked with enforcing contempt citations and recently did so against prominent Trump allies Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro. Failing to comply with a subpoena is a misdemeanor offense and can result in up to a year in jail.

Garland is the third attorney general in American history to be held in contempt and is unlikely to face prosecution from his own department.

“The audio recording is the best evidence of the words that President Biden actually spoke,” Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R., Ohio) said ahead of the vote.

“Despite the committee’s best efforts, the department has continued to withhold the audio recordings of those interviews without any Constitutional or legal basis to do so,” Jordan added.

As the committees moved to hold Garland in contempt, President Biden invoked executive privilege to protect the audio recording of Hur’s interview upon Garland’s recommendation for him to do so.

The president’s age is a major issue for his 2024 presidential campaign against former president Donald Trump, and the audio recordings could bring even more scrutiny to Biden’s apparent mental lapses.

Before Biden invoked executive privilege, the Justice Department told House Republicans it would not comply with a congressional subpoena for the audio because Republicans did not have a valid investigative purpose for the audio.

“President Biden’s Department of Justice appears to be taking every step to insulate him from the consequences — whether it’s hiding these audio recordings or attempting to give Hunter Biden a sweetheart plea deal to shield Joe Biden from facing any accountability for his role in his family’s influence-peddling schemes. That is unacceptable,” House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R., Ky.) said on the House floor ahead of the vote. Comer and Jordan are leading the House GOP’s impeachment inquiry into President Biden.

The Heritage Foundation and a group of national media outlets are fighting the Justice Department in court over a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit for the Biden-Hur tape. The Justice Department said in recent court filings the tape should not be released because of artificial-intelligence fears, and defended the president’s invocation of executive privilege.

Garland appointed Hur last year to investigate Biden’s handling of classified documents, and Hur concluded in February that criminal charges against Biden were not warranted. But, Hur’s final report on the investigation caused a stir because of its observations about Biden’s advanced age and declining mental capabilities. The report noted that Biden was unable to remember what year his son Beau had died.

Biden held an angry press conference hours after Hur’s report was released and criticized the special counsel’s description of his age. In the middle of the press conference, Biden confused the leaders of Egypt and Mexico.

In March, transcripts of Hur’s two-day interview with Biden were released ahead of Hur’s congressional testimony, and they appeared to corroborate Hur’s report. During his press conference, Biden had lashed out at Hur for having the temerity to raise the subject of his son’s death during their interview, but the interview transcript revealed that it was Biden himself who had first mentioned Beau’s death.

At the start of his testimony, Hur defended the necessity of his observations about Biden’s age for concluding that Biden did not deserve criminal prosecution for “willfully” retaining classified information. Hur also confirmed the White House attempted to pressure him into softening his language on Biden’s age prior to the final report’s publication.

Weeks after Hur’s testimony, Garland scoffed at his liberal critics for suggesting he should have intervened to edit Hur’s report.

The contempt vote happened one day after federal prosecutors secured a conviction against Joe Biden’s son Hunter on three federal gun charges connected to a firearm purchase he made in October 2018 while he was addicted to crack cocaine.

Special counsel David Weiss thanked Garland for giving his team the resources necessary to prosecute Hunter Biden in Delaware for the gun charges and in California on nine federal tax charges. Hunter Biden will stand trial again in September for the tax charges.

Weiss’s prosecution of Hunter Biden happened nearly six years after the crimes took place because of slow-walking and obstruction from federal prosecutors, according to testimony and documents from IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler. Both agents came forward last year with the misconduct allegations after spending years on the Hunter Biden tax case.

Garland’s Justice Department is continuing to prosecute Trump for allegedly mishandling classified documents and allegedly attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election.