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House Republicans have moved forward with an attempt to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress.
On Thursday, the judiciary committee voted along party lines that the panel would recommend that the full House of Representatives hold Mr Garland in contempt.
The Oversight Committee looks set to take the same measure on Thursday night, according to Politico.
A majority of the full House must then vote for the measure before it can be handed to a US attorney. This means that several vulnerable Republican moderates in seats they may lose in the autumn must vote for a measure even as they have shared concerns about their party’s growing battle with the Department of Justice.
The House Republicans made the move to recommend that the full House hold Mr Garland in contempt after the Department of Justice defied subpoenas from the House GOP demanding audio of an interview with President Joe Biden conducted by then-Special Counsel Robert Hur.
Mr Hur said in his report released earlier this year that Mr Biden may be viewed by a jury as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” – prompting criticism from Mr Biden and other Democrats.
Republicans on the other hand have used the phrase to bash the president. They have also requested the transcript of the interview with Mr Biden and other documents mentioned in the report, in addition to the audio. The Department of Justice has released the transcript and other documents but has held onto the audio.
The Department of Justice noted a number of problems with handing the audio to Congress, such as the impact it would have on future investigations.
In a letter to Mr Biden on Wednesday, Mr Garland wrote that the “Committees have failed to satisfy any of the potentially relevant standards for overcoming an assertion of executive privilege,” adding that the needs of the committees are “insufficient to outweigh the deleterious effects that productions of the recordings would have on the integrity and effectiveness of similar law enforcement investigations in the future”.
The White House told Republicans in the House on Thursday morning that Mr Biden had decided to utilize executive privilege over the audio, which essentially removes the possibility of criminal prosecution against Mr Garland for not complying with the subpoenas.
But the Republicans chose to push ahead and recommend that the attorney general be held in contempt anyway in a largely symbolic move. The lawmakers have not ruled out a lawsuit in another attempt to get the recordings.
The Hur investigation into Mr Biden’s handling of classified documents has now been dragged into the quagmire that is the Republican impeachment inquiry into the president, which has so far mostly focused on his family’s foreign business dealings but which has failed to find any evidence of wrongdoing on the part of Mr Biden.
While the impeachment inquiry has largely been put on pause as moderate lawmakers have indicated that they don’t see the evidence needed to vote to remove the president, Republican investigators are still pushing ahead with the probe.
If a majority of the full House voted for the contempt measure, the issue would be handed to US Attorney Matthew Graves, and he would, noting that executive privilege has been asserted, decide whether to file criminal charges.
Democrats argued that the Republicans want the audio to allow the Trump campaign to use it in ads and to breathe new life into their fledgling attempt to impeach Mr Biden.
Source: independent.co.uk
