By james art Washington — Republican lawyers for the House Judiciary Committee and Attorney General Merrick Garland were in court Monday in a dispute over audio tapes of President Biden’s interview with Robert Hurr, the special counsel investigating his handling of classified material after his vice presidency. The judge found she had “problems with both sides,” albeit on different issues in the case.
The committee sued Garland in July in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, escalating the battle over the audio recordings of Hurr’s interview with the president and his book’s ghostwriter, Mark Zvonitzer. Hur interviewed both men as part of his investigation.
Hur declined to seek criminal charges against Mr. Biden over his handling of the documents. The president said he was largely unaware of how classified government records from his decades-long career in public service ended up in his homes and private office, according to a transcript of the interview that was released in March. Hurr said the evidence did not establish beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Biden broke the law.
But the special counsel made a series of remarks about the president’s memory that angered the White House and provided political ammunition to Republicans whose impeachment inquiry in the president went out.
U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who presided over the case, questioned what effect, if any, the audio recordings would have. She said Mr Biden’s voice and demeanor on the tapes were a “marginal detail” when the content of the interview was already public.
“How does this narrow piece of information bear on the impeachment inquiry question of whether the president used his office to enrich himself in connection with his family’s business dealings with foreign parties?” What does his poise and demeanor have to do with this?” she asked the committee’s lawyers.
But she also noted that the president is a public figure who is used to having his voice heard by a large audience, and questioned the Justice Department as to why this circumstance was different.
The judge also asked both sides if he should listen to the tapes to help make his decision about releasing them to the commission. Both sides did not think this was necessary.
“I have problems with both sides on different issues,” she said at the end of the hearing.
Republicans on the panel argued they needed the audio recordings “because they offer unique and invaluable insight into information that cannot be captured in a transcript, such as tone of voice, tempo, inflections, verbal nuance and other idiosyncrasies,” according to the lawsuit. which asked the court to order the Department of Justice to turn over the material.
“The audio recordings are better evidence than the transcripts of what happened during the special counsel’s interviews with President Biden and Mr. Zvonitzer,” the lawsuit states. “For example, they contain verbal and non-verbal context that is missing from the cold transcript. That verbal and nonverbal context is quite important here, because the special counsel relied on the way President Biden presented himself during their interview — “as a likable, well-meaning, old man with a bad memory” — when he ultimately recommended that President Biden not be prosecuted for the illegal retention and disclosure of classified information.”
The GOP-led House voted in June to retain Garland in contempt of Congress after the White House claimed executive privilege over the records, blocking their release to lawmakers.
The Justice Department, which has a longstanding policy of not prosecuting officials for refusing to turn over subpoenaed information protected by executive privilege, declined to move for contempt.
But Republicans argued that the president waived executive privilege when the Justice Department released transcripts of the interviews.
In August, the Justice Department said in a court filing that the commission failed to recognize “the extraordinary level of disclosure that the executive branch has already made, the lack of significant congressional need for additional information, and the strong interest of law enforcement agencies in protecting the privacy of future investigations.”
“The committee’s vanishingly small informational needs do not come close to overcoming the claim of privilege.” For these reasons, the court should rule in favor of the department,” the Justice Department said, asking the court to dismiss the case.
Regarding the committee’s contention that it needed the audio tapes to assess Mr. Biden’s mental state, the Justice Department argued that Hurr had “testified before the committee on this very issue, and this hearing provided ample opportunity to examine the “subjective point of view’ of the special counsel.”
“The commission also fails to identify any questions directed at whether President Biden sought to enrich himself by retaining classified information.” Instead, she piled conjecture on top of conjecture, arguing that the tapes could reveal whether President Biden “seems delusional” when discussing “the classified material he ended up relying on when writing his memoirs,” which could lead the committee to “decided that further investigative steps are necessary” that could uncover “abuse of official position that may constitute an impeachable offense,” it said.