House Republicans Hold Merrick Garland In Contempt Of Congress

WASHINGTON ― Republicans on Wednesday held U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress, a symbolic rebuke of the nation’s top law enforcement official.

Garland refused to hand over tapes of President Joe Biden’s October 2023 interview with former special counsel Robert Hur during Hur’s investigation of Biden’s mishandling of classified information after he was vice president.

As Hur explained in his report, one reason he decided against prosecuting Biden is that the president would’ve come off to a jury as an “elderly man with a poor memory.”

The Justice Department had already made the interview transcript public, but Republicans said they need the audio to check its accuracy.

“The transcripts alone are not sufficient evidence of the state of the president’s memory,” House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said before the vote.

And House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-Ky.) told reporters last month that he suspected the transcript could have been edited by a Justice Department that supposedly protects the Bidens.

“We have every reason to doubt some of the things that they would do,” Comer said. “Someone has protected this family for many, many years.”

But ifthe Justice Department edited the transcript to protect Biden, however, it didn’t do a great job. Biden at one point struggles to place the year of his own son’s death in a sequence of major life events that included his decision not to run for president in 2016.

All Democrats and one Republican, Rep. David Joyce (Ohio), opposed the resolution.

“Today’s vote disregards the constitutional separation of powers, the Justice Department’s need to protect its investigations, and the substantial amount of information we have