Liam Conner
Washington – President Biden has asserted executive privilege over audio recordings of an investigation into the handling of classified documents, a senior Justice Department official revealed in a letter to House committee leaders obtained by CBS News.
The statement came on the recommendation of the Department of Justice, as the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees were scheduled to move forward with appointments for a contempt for Congressional resolution against Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday for defying his request for audio recordings of an October 2023 interview with special counsel Robert Hur that came as part of the confidential documents case against Mr. Hur.
“While our cooperation with Congress has been extraordinary, we also have a responsibility to safeguard the confidentiality of law enforcement files whose disclosure could jeopardize future investigations,” Deputy Attorney General Carlos Uriarte wrote on Thursday: “ The Attorney General must draw a line that protects the Department from improper political influence and protects our principles, our law enforcement work, and the people who independently perform that work.”
The Justice Department says it “made substantial efforts” to respond to requests for information and materials from congressional committees following Hur’s investigation into the president’s past handling of confidential records, adding that they had already turned over transcripts of the two interviews from which The audio recordings are now in question.
“The Committees have not yet identified a remaining need for these audio files,” Uriarte argued.
CBS News and other media outlets sued for access to the recordings.
The response and the upcoming vote could launch the two branches into an election-year legal fight over the tapes, in which the White House and Justice Department would be forced to justify turning over the transcripts to Congress and draw a line under the tape recordings. audio of the president.
“We went to extraordinary lengths to ensure that committees got responses to their legitimate requests,” Garland said in brief comments to reporters Thursday morning. “But this isn’t one.”
The legal basis for the president’s assertion of executive privilege, according to another letter obtained by CBS News from the attorney general to Mr. Biden, came from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel and Garland himself made the recommendation to the president.
“The needs of the Committees are clearly insufficient to offset the deleterious effects that production of the recordings would have on the integrity and effectiveness of similar police investigations in the future,” Garland wrote in a letter to the president dated May 15. I respectfully request that you assert executive privilege over the subpoenaed recordings. I also request that you make a protective declaration of executive privilege with respect to any other materials in response to the subpoenas that have not yet been produced.
The attorney general wrote that he feared the release of the tapes could jeopardize the cooperation of witnesses, including White House officials, in any future investigations. He said the risk outweighs the committee’s request.
The White House Counsel’s Office also responded to the upcoming contempt votes, writing to House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan and House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer on Thursday morning, claiming that they likely they would “crop” and “distort” the recordings “for partisan political purposes.” if they get them.
“Requiring the executive branch of such sensitive and constitutionally protected law enforcement materials because you want to manipulate them for potential political gain is inappropriate,” Edward Siskel wrote Thursday.
The move to assert executive privilege, which grants the executive branch the ability to withhold certain communications from the courts or Congress under the doctrine of separation of powers, is expected to protect Garland from criminal prosecution. Garland noted in a letter that the Justice Department has a history of recognizing that executive privilege protects materials related to “closed criminal investigations where disclosure is likely to harm future law enforcement efforts.”
The committees subpoenaed the audio recording and other records, in part to determine whether “sufficient grounds exist to draft articles of impeachment against President Biden,” according to committee reports. They argued that the subpoenas issued to the Justice Department are part of the House impeachment inquiry.
“The Department did not invoke any constitutional or legal privileges to support the retention of this material,” the reports state. “His failure to fully comply with the Committees’ subpoenas undermined the House’s ability to properly conduct Special Counsel Hur’s oversight of his investigative findings and the President’s withholding and disclosure of confidential materials and impeded the Committees’ impeachment inquiry.”
