Topline
The House Judiciary Committee next Wednesday will reportedly start proceedings to hold U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress after he refused to hand over the audio of former special counsel Robert Hur's interview with Joe Biden over his mishandling of classified documents.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland attends a meeting at the White House on Jan. 22, 2024.
Key Facts
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chairman of the committee, has scheduled a hearing for May 16 to start the proceedings, multiple reporters confirmed Monday.
The move comes more than a month after House Republicans first started to threaten the attorney general over his refusal to comply with a subpoena issued for the audio recordings that captured Hur's interview with Biden, which ultimately led to the investigator describing the president as a "well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory."
The Department of Justice did hand over a transcript of the interview to the committee but Garland has not released the audio of the conversations with Biden or with Mark Zwonitzer, the ghostwriter of Biden’s 2017 memoir.
In an April letter, the Department of Justice said it would not be giving Congress the tapes, with Assistant Attorney General Carlos Felipe Uriarte writing that to demand the audio on top of the transcripts is “to serve political purposes that should have no role in the treatment of law enforcement files,” also accusing Republicans of starting an unnecessary conflict, CNN reported.
In March, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) and Jordan issued the subpoena alongside a letter to Garland saying the transcripts were "insufficient.”
Representatives for Jordan, the House Judiciary panel and the Department of Justice did not immediately respond to Forbes’ request for comment.
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Key Background
The Justice Department in 2022 launched an investigation into Biden after lawyers found classified documents at his office at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement and at Biden’s home in Delaware. Two months later, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Hur to be special counsel to investigate the matter. The documents included information about “issues of national security and foreign policy implicating sensitive intelligence sources and methods.” In February, Hur issued a report that said while the president was reckless with the documents, he did not willfully break the law and "it would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him." The report was a scathing commentary on the president’s memory, with claims he'd forgotten the year his son Beau died of brain cancer and when he served as vice president. Hur later testified for hours in front of the House Judiciary Committee, saying "I did not sanitize my explanation. Nor did I disparage the President unfairly." Last month, Garland responded to a reporter’s question about whether Hur's characterization of the president was inappropriate by saying it would be "absurd" for an attorney general to have stepped in to "edit or redact or censor the special counsel’s explanation."
Crucial Quote
“I’m well-meaning and I’m an elderly man and I know what the hell I’m doing,” Biden said after Hur’s report was released. “My memory’s fine.”
