President Joe Biden has asserted executive privilege over audio of his interview with special counsel Robert Hur, who is at the center of a Republican effort to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress, the department said. of Justice to legislators on Thursday.
This comes as the House Oversight and Accountability Committee and Judiciary Committee are expected to hold a hearing to recommend that the full House refer Garland to the Justice Department on contempt charges over the department’s refusal to turn over the Audio.
Garland informed Biden in a letter Thursday that the audio falls within the scope of executive privilege. Garland told the Democratic president that “the needs of the commission are clearly insufficient to offset the deleterious effects that the production of the recordings would have on the integrity and effectiveness of similar police investigations in the future.”
Deputy Attorney General Carlos Felipe Uriarte urged lawmakers not to continue the contempt effort to avoid “an unnecessary and unjustified conflict.”
“It is a long-standing position of the Executive Branch held by administrations of both parties that an official who asserts the president’s claim to executive privilege cannot be held in contempt of Congress,” Uriarte wrote.
White House counsel Ed Siskel wrote in another scathing letter to Congress Thursday that lawmakers’ effort to obtain the recording lacked any legitimate purpose and lays bare its possible goal: “to cut, distort, and use for partisans”. Political purposes.”
The White House memo is a tacit admission that there are moments in the interview that fears portraying Biden in a negative light in an election year, and that could be exacerbated by the release, or selective release, of the audio.
The transcript of Hur’s interview showed Biden struggling to remember some dates and occasionally confusing some details (something his longtime advisers say he has done for years both publicly and privately), but otherwise displaying deep recollection. in other areas. Biden and her aides are particularly sensitive to questions about her age. At 81, he is the oldest president in history and is seeking another four-year term.
Hur found some evidence that Biden had intentionally withheld classified information and disclosed it to a ghostwriter, but concluded it was insufficient to bring criminal charges.
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