Christian Smith
House impeachment investigators will meet next week to vote on whether to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt as part of their quest to gain access to an audio recording of an interview conducted with President Biden during his documents investigation confidential.
House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) have a transcript of Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur, but the Department of Justice avoided sharing the audio files.
The substance of the recording has little to do with the Biden impeachment investigation. Still, the panels searched for the audio, as well as two documents found in his home that dealt with Ukraine.
The Justice Department has twice urged the committees not to escalate the matter, and last month said the two presidents requested the information based on “political purposes that should have no role” in determining which law enforcement files are shared.
“It seems that the more information you receive, the less satisfied you are, and the less justification you have for contempt, the more you rush toward it,” Carlos Uriarte, the Justice Department’s chief of legislative affairs, wrote to Jordan and Eat. last month.
The department declined to comment on the matter Tuesday morning, but took the position that handing over its investigative files would have a chilling effect as they seek cooperation in various investigations.
House Republicans defended their interest in audio, saying the format contains “telling verbal cues” and that “a subject’s pauses and inflections can provide context or evidence whether a subject is evasive or suffers from a ‘poor memory.’”
“The Department’s unfounded speculation about the Committees’ motives for insisting that you produce the audio recordings has no bearing on your legal obligation to produce the subpoenaed materials,” they wrote last month.
The contempt vote, if approved, would move from the committee to the House plenary.
While censure of a sitting Attorney General would be notable, it would likely have little practical effect: Contempt votes largely function as a referral to the Justice Department, which then assesses whether there are grounds for contempt of Congress’ charges.
The upcoming hearing is not the first time both presidents have threatened contempt as part of the impeachment investigation.
Last summer, the pair were prepared to hold FBI Director Christopher Wray in contempt over access to the FD-1023 file, commemorating an interview with an agency informant who alleged that Biden accepted a bribe while serving as vice president.
The informant has since been arrested on charges related to fabricating the allegation.
An attorney general has been held in contempt only twice before.
In 2012, Attorney General Eric Holder was held in contempt for refusing to turn over documents related to Operation Fast and Furious, where law enforcement failed to intervene when nearly 2,000 guns were sold.
The department took no further action against Holder.
Trump-era Attorney General Bill Barr was also held in contempt for circumventing a subpoena addressing changes made to the Census form, and the department also took no further action.
Biden’s interview with Hur focuses on how documents from his tenure as vice president ended up in his home and in an office he used after leaving the government.
The interview served as the basis for Hur’s conclusion that Biden would likely be viewed as “an elderly man with a poor memory” by a jury, although he also wrote that he was unable to find sufficient evidence to support any accusations.
The Justice Department insists that its decision to withhold the recording is not political, but rather consistent with its prerogative to protect its investigations.
“The decision to meet with investigators and prosecutors should not include a tacit invitation for the Committees to participate, comment, or apply selective hindsight,” Uriarte wrote last month.
“It would be extremely frightening if the decision to cooperate with a police investigation required individuals to submit to a public inquiry by politicians.”
