House Panel to Initiate Contempt Proceedings Against Garland

The House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to mark up a resolution on May 16 to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress.

The committee’s reason was Mr. Garland’s refusal to turn over audio tapes of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s interviews with President Joe Biden over his alleged mishandling of classified information, a source familiar told The Epoch Times on May 6.

The committee will mark up a resolution during a hearing where amendments can be added before the measure is passed out of the committee and sent to the House floor.

The measure would need to pass the House before a referral is made to the Justice Department, but whether Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) would bring a resolution to the floor is unclear.

The Epoch Times has reached out to Mr. Johnson’s office to ask if he would bring up the resolution.

The House Judiciary and Oversight and Accountability Committees warned Mr. Garland on April 15 that he would be held in contempt of Congress if he did not turn over the tapes from Mr. Hur’s two-day interview with the president, whom the special counsel ultimately declined to indict.

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“Your refusal to comply with the subpoena’s legal obligation appears to be yet another unfortunate example of the department refusing to abide by the same standards it requires of other Americans,” the congressmen wrote in a letter.

The department has since responded by providing transcripts of the special counsel’s interviews with the president and Mr. Zwonitzer, but no recordings.

The committees, in response, had repeatedly threatened contempt proceedings against the attorney general over this failure to turn over the tapes.

The Justice Department has pushed back on the request, arguing that there is no need for the department to hand it over, considering the committees have transcripts of the interviews.

“The committees have not articulated a legitimate Congressional need to obtain audio recordings from Mr. Hur’s investigation, let alone one that outweighs the Department’s strong interest in protecting the confidentiality of law enforcement files,” Assistant Attorney General Carlos Felipe Uriate wrote in an April 25 letter to the committees.

Mr. Uriarte emphasized that the Justice Department expeditiously complied with the committees’ requests and also suggested the committees’ goals were political.

“We do not obtain evidence for criminal investigations so that it may later be deployed for political purposes,” he wrote.

The Epoch Times has reached out to the Justice Department for comment.

In an April 16 testimony before Congress, Mr. Garland said there were extenuating circumstances due to “privileges with respect to national security” matters discussed in the recordings.

In their most recent correspondence with the Justice Department, the Oversight and Judiciary Committees noted that audio recordings are “materially different” from transcripts and offer unique insight—such as vocal tone, inflection, and other verbal cues—that can’t be conveyed via text.

Mr. Hur announced on Feb. 8 that President Biden would not be charged over his handling of classified documents after his vice presidency.

In a 388-page report to Mr. Garland, Mr. Hur said that “the evidence does not establish Mr. Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt” and that “prosecution of Mr. Biden is also unwarranted based on our consideration of the aggravating and mitigating factors.”

In deciding not to charge the president, Mr. Hur said that a jury likely would not convict him, in part due to alleged issues with mental acuity.

“We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” wrote Mr. Hur.

Samantha Flom contributed to this report.