Garland contempt vote set to hit floor despite GOP reservations

A vote to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress may be on thin ice, with nearly half a dozen Republican lawmakers expressing reservations about supporting the move to censure him in a vote expected Wednesday.

Two sources familiar with internal conversations told The Hill that at least five members of the Republican Party have expressed opposition to supporting a contempt resolution against the attorney general. One source said additional members expressed hesitation about holding the vote.

No Republican has publicly said they intend to vote against the measure, but just two GOP defections are enough to sink a bill by the party’s razor-thin margins.

The House Rules Committee cleared the way Tuesday for the resolution to be considered by the full House.

House leadership delayed a vote on the Garland resolution for nearly a month after it was approved by the House Judiciary and Oversight committees. The measure took effect even after Republicans promised to conduct greater oversight of the Justice Department in the wake of former President Trump’s unrelated state-level lawsuit.

House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) was noticeably absent during a House Rules Committee meeting to consider the measure on Tuesday, but sought to project confidence even as he avoided directly answering whether the GOP had the votes.

“I think so, but you have to check with the whip,” he told reporters on Tuesday night.

The move comes after both committees subpoenaed audio of President Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur. The panels already contain a transcript of the conversation.

The Justice Department argued that releasing the audio could harm cooperation in future investigations by those who do not want their conversations shared with Congress.

Biden also claimed executive privilege over the audio, which largely provides Garland with legal cover, as the assertion is generally considered to preclude any lawsuit over the covered materials.

Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and Garret Graves (R-La.) said they were undecided on how to vote on the issue.

“I just want to read everything. So I will keep an open mind and want to read the resolutions. Let me hear both sides and make a decision,” Fitzpatrick said.

“Let’s read the resolution. Let’s get to the prosecutor’s counterargument about why he shouldn’t be held in contempt and figure out what the right thing to do is.”

Graves said he thought the “arrogance that [Garland has] shown is inappropriate.”

“You can’t try to delineate between a transcript and a recording. As far as I’m concerned, when they handed over the transcript, they effectively said, ‘Yes, you can have this,’” he said.

But Graves said he was still unsure of his vote.

“I don’t think Garland has done an effective job of communicating why he is trying to distinguish between the two. I understand he’s saying we gave it to you, but obviously there’s a reason they’re not recording it and I want to understand that better.”

House Rules Committee Chairman Michael Burgess (R-Texas) said during Tuesday’s meeting that Garland “refused to comply. He left us no choice but to pursue contempt charges to preserve the spirit of congressional oversight and safeguard our delicate system of checks and balances.”

While Democrats say Republicans will manipulate the audio and use it in campaign commercials, Republicans argue it will provide information about Biden’s mental acuity following Hur’s comments that he had a “poor memory.”

But the heart of the matter is the GOP impeachment investigation, which Republicans voltage to connect to Hur’s investigation into confidential documents. It’s clear from the transcript that matters related to the impeachment investigation were not discussed, but the Republican Party argues nonetheless that the public should also have access to the audio as a possible window into Biden’s state of mind.

Democrats rejected that argument.

“They don’t want to read the president’s answers in the interview. They want to hear the book on tape, in a last-ditch attempt to blame a Cabinet member for the spectacular failure of their ridiculous impeachment campaign. They concocted an allegation that Garland impeded their investigation by preventing them from listening to, rather than reading, President Biden’s interview with the special counsel,” said House Oversight Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) , during the meeting.

Raskin said the Republican Party is arguing that “listening [Biden’s words] would somehow change the content of the president’s interview or the meaning of his answers and would suddenly reveal the Holy Grail of the 118th Congress: evidence of the as yet unidentified and unidentified impeachable offense that has spent millions of taxpayer dollars searching.” .

House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), however, questioned the validity of Biden’s executive privilege claims.

“The president waived any executive privilege over these audio recordings by releasing to the public a transcript of the entire interview,” Comer said, noting that Biden did not initially claim executive privilege over the transcripts in the interest of transparency.

The meeting also saw both sides trading accusations over who can be trusted to accurately represent the interviews.

Comer raised suspicions that the transcript may not be accurate, calling it “insufficient to simply take the Department of Justice at its word that the transcripts were not altered.”

The Justice Department sued in a separate legal battle to obtain the audio said the transcript was accuratenoting that “filler words” such as “um” or “uh” were not included, nor were repeated words “I, me.”

“The transcripts accurately capture the words spoken during the interview in the audio recording, without material differences,” the department said.

In the same case, the Justice Department argued that it also feared that releasing the audio could lead to its manipulation.

House Judiciary ranking member Jerrold Nadler (DN.Y.) said disinformation expert Nina Jankowicz faced this problem last year after speaking to the committee.

“The only thing that was not produced is the recording itself, something that in the wrong hands – specifically in the hands of Mr. Jordan – could be easily manipulated. This is not an idle concern. Last year, a witness who testified in a closed-door deposition told us that he was the victim of a video manipulated and amplified by Republicans on the Judiciary Committee and that this contributed to a barrage of death threats against them,” Nadler said.

The contempt resolution essentially serves as a referral to the Department of Justice, which would then be tasked with determining whether it believes a crime has been committed and whether charges should be filed.

It’s unlikely that Justice Department officials would reach a different conclusion than Garland when weighing whether he should be prosecuted.

Mychael Schnell contributed.