The House Judiciary Committee sued Attorney General Merrick Garland on Monday over the congressional attempts to obtain the audio recordings of the interviews between special counsel Robert Hur’s interviews with President Joe Biden. According to reports, the committee has requested that the DC district court overrule Biden’s claim of executive privilege over the recordings.
For months, congressional Republicans and the Department of Justice have argued over the recordings. Last month, the House of Representatives even voted to hold AG Garland in contempt of Congress for refusing to hand over the tapes. The GOP has argued that the audio recordings possess other vital details that cannot be revealed through the transcripts.
“Transcripts do not and cannot capture emphasis, inflection, intonation, nuance, pace, pauses, pitch, rhythm, tone, and other verbal and nonverbal cues and idiosyncrasies that convey meaning to a listener,” House Republicans wrote in their filing. They continued, “A witness communicates even when he or she hesitates, pauses, or remains silent—all of which have no replication in a transcript. These aspects of an interview provide immeasurable insight into a witness’s credibility and mental state and help in evaluating and understanding a witness’s answers.”
Furthermore, Speaker Johnson addressed the audio tape controversy in a recent press release, echoing the sentiment shared by the rest of the Republican Party. Johnson argued that the House must be diligent in enforcing its subpoena of Garland, maintaining that its constitutional authority cannot be defied by the executive branch.
He said, “Well, all the House Republicans are in 100% agreement that we have to be aggressive and enforcing the subpoenas of the House. This is about our Article One authority under the Constitution, and we cannot allow the executive branch to defy that. Merrick Garland has refused to turn over something that we are entitled to receive because we are pursuing our oversight responsibility under the Constitution. We have to ensure that the transcript that we’ve been provided a special counsel Hur’s investigation of President Biden or his lengthy examination and questioning of President Biden.”
Johnson further illustrated the value of obtaining the audio tapes to determine whether the transcript that was provided to the House is accurate, something he argues is not only “reasonable” but also “necessary.” The speaker asserted that Garland does not have the authority to decide not to provide the recordings to the House of Representatives as requested.
“We have to make sure the transcript matches the audio tape. That is a very reasonable thing and a necessary thing for the House and its investigatory authority to do. The Attorney General’s not turning it over. He does not have the authority to decide whether that tape is turned over to the House. He’s the attorney general. This is a special count Council proceeding,” he added.
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Special counsel Robert Hur was previously charged with investigating Joe Biden’s alleged mishandling of classified documents. Hur ultimately concluded that the investigation should not proceed with criminal charges against Biden, in part, due to his elderly age and apparent complications with his memory that were revealed by the interviews. Watch footage of a GOP Rep. stressing that the “DOJ is not above the law” below:
Featured image credit: Tom Williams (CQ Roll Call), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Merrick_Garland_August_2023_press_conference.jpg