The Department of Justice (DOJ) has declined to provide the House of Representatives with a recording of President Joe Biden’s interview with former special counsel Robert Hur.
Hur was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate Biden’s unlawful possession of classified government documents from his service as vice president and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee after leaving both positions. After Hur declined to recommend charges against Biden but released a report that suggested he had poor memory, House Republicans have demanded an audio recording of the interview, which the DOJ on Monday refused to submit, according to a letter it sent to the House Judiciary Committee and Oversight and Accountability Committee.
“The Committees have already received the extraordinary accommodation of the transcripts, which gives you the information you say you need. To go further by producing the audio files would compound the likelihood that future prosecutors will be unable to secure this level of cooperation,” wrote Carlos Felipe Uriarte, the assistant attorney general for legislative affairs, in the letter denying the committees’ requests. “[Prosecutors] might have a harder time obtaining consent to an interview at all. It is clearly not in the public interest to render such cooperation with prosecutors and investigators less likely in the future.”
The committees are reportedly considering initiating contempt proceedings against Garland should the recording not be provided, according to Axios.
“The Biden Administration does not get to determine what Congress needs and does not need for its oversight of the executive branch. It’s curious the Biden Administration is refusing to release the audio of President Biden’s interview with the Special Counsel after releasing the transcript. Why shouldn’t the American people be able to hear the actual audio of his answers?” wrote Republican Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, the chairman of the Oversight and Accountability Committee, in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “The American people demand transparency from their leaders, not obstruction. The Oversight Committee will continue to work with the Judiciary Committee to obtain the information needed for our investigation of President Biden’s willful retention of classified documents. We will respond to the Justice Department soon.”
The DOJ suggested that the committees do not have a legitimate purpose for requesting the information. “Although the Committees have pointed out, correctly, that the Constitution implicitly grants Congress ‘broad’ and “indispensable” authority to seek information when motivated by a legitimate investigative purpose, neither branch has any constitutionally-based authority to seek conflict for conflict’s sake,” wrote Uriarte.
