House Republicans sought audio tapes of the president’s interviews with special counsel Hur. Biden has invoked executive privilege over the tapes.
WASHINGTON—The House on June 12 voted to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress for failing to comply with a subpoena to produce audio tapes of President Joe Biden’s interviews with special counsel Robert Hur.
In a mostly party-line 216–207 vote, the House approved a measure to recommend criminal charges for Mr. Garland. One Republican, Ohio Rep. David Joyce, joined all Democrats to vote against the resolution.
A referral will now be made to the Department of Justice (DOJ), which is unlikely to prosecute the matter, so it may end up in the courts.
The passage of the resolution is the culmination of a months-long standoff between House Republicans and the DOJ over the production recordings of President Biden’s two-day interview conducted with Mr. Hur in a probe related to the handling of classified documents. President Biden has invoked executive privilege over the tapes.
Speaking at the Republicans’ weekly news conference ahead of the vote, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) argued that Mr. Garland “doesn’t get to decide whether he’s going to comply with a subpoena or not.”
Responding to the referral, Mr. Garland said it was “deeply disappointing” that the House had “turned a serious congressional authority into a partisan weapon.”
“Today’s vote disregards the constitutional separation of powers, the Justice Department’s need to protect its investigations, and the substantial amount of information that we have provided to the Committees,” the attorney general said in a statement.
Mr. Hur’s report, in reaching its conclusion not to recommend charges against the president, cited that President Biden would present to a jury as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
That finding sparked intense scrutiny over the president’s mental acuity—assertions forcefully rejected by President Biden and the White House.
While the DOJ has turned over transcripts and notes from the interview, House Republicans have maintained that they need the tapes to verify the transcript’s accuracy and to confirm that Mr. Hur’s observation was justified.
By Joseph Lord, Jackson Richman and Samantha Flom
