DOJ won’t prosecute Merrick Garland after Republicans vote to hold him in contempt

The Department of Justice will not pursue a criminal case against Attorney General Merrick Garland after House Republicans voted to hold him in contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena for audio tapes from an interview with President Joe Biden.

On Wednesday, the House of Representatives voted 216 to 207 to hold Garland in contempt, with only one Republican joining Democratic members in opposition, marking the House GOP’s latest move in a flailing investigation into the president and his administration.

Garland’s responses to subpoenas issued by GOP-controlled committees – which called on the attorney general to release audio recordings from Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur – “did not constitute a crime,” the Justice Department wrote on Friday.

The department’s decision effectively closes that case.

In his letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson on Friday, Assistant Attorney General Carlos Felipe Uriarte stated the president had asserted executive privilege over the tapes, and that the decision was in line with how the Justice Department handled contempt resolutions against Garland’s predecessors.

“Consistent with this longstanding position and uniform practice, the Department has determined that the responses by Attorney General Garland to the subpoenas issued by the Committees did not constitute a crime, and accordingly the Department will not bring the congressional contempt citation before a grand jury or take any other action to prosecute the Attorney General further,” Uriarte wrote.

In a statement earlier this week, Garland said it was “deeply disappointing” the House turned a “serious congressional authority into a partisan weapon.”

The vote “disregards the constitutional separation of powers, the