WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden has asserted executive privilege over the audio of his interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur, which is at the center of a Republican effort to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress, the Justice Department said to lawmakers on Thursday.
It comes at a time when the House Oversight and Accountability Committee and the Judiciary Committee are each expected to hold a hearing to recommend that the full House refer Garland to the Justice Department over the contempt charges over the department’s refusal to to hand 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 committee’s “needs are clearly insufficient to outweigh the detrimental effects that the production of the recordings would have on the integrity and effectiveness of similar law enforcement investigations in the future.”
Assistant Attorney General Carlos Felipe Uriarte urged lawmakers not to continue the contemptuous attempt to avoid “unnecessary and unwarranted conflict.”
“It is the long-standing position of the executive branch of administrations of both parties that an official asserting the President’s claim to executive privilege cannot be considered in contempt of Congress,” Uriarte wrote.
White House attorney Ed Siskel wrote in a separate, scathing letter to Congress on Thursday that lawmakers’ attempt to obtain the recording had no legitimate purpose and exposed their likely purpose — “to dismember, twist and use for partisan political purposes.”
The White House letter is a tacit admission that there are moments in the interview that are feared to portray 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 the Hur interview showed that Biden had trouble remembering some dates and occasionally mixed up some details — something longtime aides say he has been doing for years, both publicly and privately — but otherwise showed deep memory in other areas. Biden and his aides are particularly sensitive to questions about his age. At 81 years old, he is the oldest president ever, and he is seeking a new four-year term.
Hur found some evidence that Biden had deliberately withheld classified information and disclosed it to a ghostwriter, but concluded it was insufficient for criminal prosecution.