On Wednesday, Republicans voted 216 to 207 to declare Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over the sound of President Joe Biden’s meeting with special counsel Robert Hur.
Rep. David Joyce, R- Ohio, voted with Democrats never to keep Garland in hatred.
By putting Attorney General Garland in contempt of Congress, Speaker Mike Johnson described the vote as a” important step in maintaining the dignity of our monitoring operations and responsibilities.”
” Congress has a duty to oversee the work of the Special Counsel’s, and particularly Special Counsel Hur’s decision not to prosecute President Biden for the apparent violation of the law,” Johnson’s statement continued.
According to Hur, the Department of Justice ( DOJ) released a record of the meeting, which stated that Biden was an “elderly person with a poor memory,” and that the president would not be charged with bringing top-secret documents into his Delaware home. According to Hur’s team’s report, “many judges will want to determine reasonable question for him based on our direct relationships with and observations of]Biden].”
It would be difficult to persuade a judge that they should convict him of a serious misdemeanor that necessitates a mental state of willfulness, according to the report.
]READ NEXT: Either Biden Is An’ Elderly Man With A Weak Memory,’ Or He Needs To Be Charged. Pick One ]
Additionally, according to Hur, Biden’s memory “appeared to include important limitations,” noting that Biden could not recall the start and end dates of his terms as vice president.
Soon after Hur’s report was released, Republicans demanded copies of the tapes, with some Republicans, including Majority Whip Tom Emmer, suggesting that the record might have been edited to not really match the audio. Hur testified in March that the White House had asked him to “make some revisions” to the document.
Garland cited problems that someone might use AI to manipulate the music as a justification for not making the audio public, and the text was sufficient. However, as my partner David Harsanyi writes,” the real issue here is n’t the deep false; it’s the unedited tape.”
” Withholding the music is clearly politically inspired”, Harsanyi explains.
But if you’re hoping for any legitimate accountability with Wednesday’s vote, do n’t hold your breath. The DOJ has the option of deciding whether to prosecute a person who Congress has held in contempt. Biden’s Court seems ready to cover for Garland. According to The Hill, a memo from the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel ( OLC ) claimed that Garland had no authority to turn the tapes over to Congress because Biden had asserted executive privilege over them.
The OLC contends that as long as the president has exercised executive privilege, there is no precedence for an administration official to be found guilty of violating a parliamentary subpoena.
According to The Hill, the Executive Branch has been taking the position that the fugitive contempt of Congress act does not use to Executive Branch officials who do not agree with a congressional lawsuit based on a political statement of executive privilege for almost seven decades and across national administrations of both parties, according to the memo.
The Federalist’s Brianna Lyman is a journalist for elections.
