On Monday, House Republicans escalated their ongoing confrontation with President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ), delivering a stern warning to Attorney General Merrick Garland. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) and House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) issued a letter threatening Garland with contempt proceedings.
The heart of the matter lies in the subpoena issued to Garland on February 27, demanding access to audio recordings of interviews conducted by Special Counsel Robert Hur with President Biden and his ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer. These interviews were part of Hur’s investigation into Biden’s mishandling of classified documents. However, the DOJ has only provided the committees with redacted transcripts of Hur’s interview with Biden, while completely withholding the audio recordings, which were specifically requested by the committees in a follow-up letter on March 9. Additionally, neither the transcript nor the audio of Zwonitzer’s interview has been supplied.
In a letter sent to Garland on Monday, the chairmen reiterated their demands, setting a deadline of 12:00 p.m. on April 8, 2024, for the DOJ to produce all requested materials. They warned that failure to comply could lead to further actions, including the possibility of initiating contempt of Congress proceedings.
Jordan and Comer also accused the DOJ of misleading the committee about the timeline for completing its review of the transcripts. They pointed out that several news outlets had received and reviewed the transcripts of Hur’s interviews with President Biden before they were made available to the committees. This occurred despite the DOJ’s claim that it had only completed its “interagency review” of the transcripts on the morning of March 12, shortly before providing them to the committees. The chairmen suggested that the DOJ and the White House might have distributed the transcripts to news outlets for political reasons before completing the review process, or alternatively, that the DOJ had misled the committees about the timing of the review’s completion.
Special Counsel Hur submitted his report in February, which, while not charging Biden, raised significant concerns about Biden’s memory. The report highlighted Biden’s inability to recall, even approximately, the date of his son Beau’s death. Furthermore, Biden seemed to struggle with remembering his tenure as vice president, forgetting both when his term ended and when it began during his interviews.
Hur has characterized Biden’s mishandling of classified documents as “willful,” intensifying the scrutiny on the President’s actions.
Bradley Jaye, a Capitol Hill Correspondent for Breitbart News, provides coverage on these developments. Follow his updates on X/Twitter at @BradleyAJaye.