MAKING MOVES

House Republicans Want to Hold Merrick Garland in Contempt Over Biden Tape

The attorney general refused to hand over the audio of an interview with a president.

House Republicans will move forward next week with a plan to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress for refusing to hand over the audio recording of an interview with President Joe Biden conducted as part of former special counsel Robert Hur’s probe into Biden’s handling of classified documents, reports say.

The House Judiciary Committee is planning to hold a “markup” for a contempt resolution on May 16, a source told the Associated Press. The resolution could then go to the full House for a vote.

‘ATTORNEY GENIAL’

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Republicans have repeatedly demanded that the Justice Department turn over the unredacted audio of Biden’s interviews with Hur—requests that the DOJ has rebuffed. Instead, the department gave only some of the records, excluding the audio, to committees conducting the impeachment inquiry into Biden.

The DOJ warned that handing over the audio could set a precedent for future inquiries. In a letter last month to Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and James Comer (R-KY), Assistant Attorney General Carlos Uriarte said the committees’ desire for the audio might not be “in service of legitimate oversight or investigatory functions” but rather to “serve political purposes that should have no role in the treatment of law enforcement files.”