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House Republicans will take their first step towards holding Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress on Thursday for refusing to turn over the audio recordings of special counsel Robert Hur’s interviews with President Joe Biden.
The House Oversight and Judiciary committees will each hold markups on their respective reports recommending a contempt of Congress resolution against Garland for failing to comply with a congressional subpoena. If passed out of the committees, the resolutions would next go to the House floor for a vote by the whole chamber. It is not clear when that vote would be held.
Shortly after Hur closed his investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents in February, Republicans subpoenaed the Department of Justice for a number of documents and information, including the audio recordings of the special counsel’s interviews with Biden and his ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer.
While Hur’s probe led to no charges against the president, Republicans have seized on Hur’s description of Biden as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” in his final report.
CNN has sued for access to recordings of federal investigators’ interview with Biden in the now-closed probe over his handling of classified documents.
Through their subpoenas to DOJ, House Republicans have argued that the audio recordings are crucial to their impeachment inquiry into Biden, which remains stalled as the prospects of the investigation ending in impeachment are increasingly unlikely. Without the votes in their narrow majority or evidence of an impeachable offense, Republicans are now struggling with how to end their probe and are looking for ways to target other members of the Biden administration.
The Department has made the majority of the subpoenaed materials available to House Republicans, including transcripts of the special counsel’s interviews with Biden and his ghostwriter, but it has doubled down on its decision to not release the audio files of the interviews, stating that Republicans have not established a legitimate legislative purpose for demanding these recordings.
In their contempt reports, Republicans stated that DOJ does not get to determine what information is useful to their investigation, and argued that the verbal nuances of an audio recording provide unique insight into a subject that are not reflected in a transcript.
“The Constitution does not permit the executive branch to dictate to Congress how to proceed with an impeachment inquiry or to conduct its oversight,” the report reads.
In a recent letter to the Republican-led committees, DOJ Assistant Attorney General Carlos Uriarte wrote to the House Oversight and Judiciary panels that Republicans do not need the audio recordings since DOJ turned over the transcripts, which would address Republican allegations made about the president as part of their impeachment inquiry.
“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 towards it,” Uriarte wrote.
DOJ has also outlined distinct privacy concerns related to an audio recording of an interview compared to a written transcript, and how the release of such an audio file could dissuade cooperation from future witnesses in criminal investigations.
Raising concerns that Republicans want these audio files for political purposes, he added: “the Committees’ inability to identify a need for these audio files grounded in legislative or impeachment purposes raises concerns about what other purposes they might serve.”
Republicans, meanwhile, argue in their report that while the transcripts of the interviews reflect what was said, “they do not reflect important verbal context, such as tone or tenor, or nonverbal context, such as pauses or pace of delivery.”
Such pauses and inflections, Republicans claim, “can provide indications of a witness’s ability to recall events, or whether the individual is intentionally giving evasive or nonresponsive testimony to investigators.”
Republicans pointed to a recent example of when a transcript and audio recording of the president diverged, stating that at a speech last month, Biden read a teleprompter cue out loud during his speech, which was reflected in the recording of the event but not in the initial transcript of his remarks.
The House Oversight Committee pushed back the start time of its Thursday markup so that Republican committee members can attend the criminal trial of former President Donald Trump in New York City, two sources familiar with the planning told CNN.
When asked to comment on the reason for the schedule change, an Oversight Committee spokeswoman told CNN, “Due to member schedule conflicts, the markup is now starting at a different time to accommodate members’ schedules.”
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