By james art Washington — Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee and Attorney General Merrick Garland are 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 materials since his vice presidency.
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.
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, as the special counsel relied on the way President Biden presented himself during their interview — “as a likable, well-intentioned, elderly man with a bad memory” — when he ultimately recommended President Biden not to be prosecuted for the illegal storage 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 integrity 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 failed to identify any questions directed at whether President Biden sought to enrich himself by retaining classified information.” Instead, he piled on conjecture after conjecture, claiming the tapes could reveal whether President Biden “seemed deluded” when discussing the “classified material he ended up relying on when writing his memoirs,” which could to have the committee “determine that further investigative steps are necessary” that could uncover “abuse of official position that could constitute an impeachable offense,” it said.