Attorneys for the House Judiciary Committee have taken extraordinary measures to obtain the audio recording of President Joe Biden’s interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur, filing a lawsuit against Attorney General Merrick Garland in his official capacity on Monday.
The lawsuit alleges that the Trump-appointed Garland is stonewalling Congress’s oversight investigation into the Department of Justice’s commitment to impartial justice and the impeachment inquiry into Biden’s alleged mishandling of classified documents. Specifically, the committee is seeking recordings of interviews conducted by Special Counsel Hur, including those with President Biden and Mark Zwonitzer, the ghostwriter of Biden’s 2017 memoir.
The committee’s complaint recounts a pattern of defiance, including unresponsive subpoenas and failed attempts to hold Garland in contempt. Despite this, the Justice Department has persisted in obstructing the release of the recordings, citing President Biden’s assertion of executive privilege.
The House Judiciary Committee is pushing back against the Biden administration’s justification for invoking privilege, arguing that audio recordings are inherently more valuable than transcripts. The lawmakers argue that the recordings capture verbal and nonverbal context, including tone and facial expressions, which are crucial in assessing the Special Counsel’s characterization of President Biden’s interview and the subsequent decision not to prosecute the president for unlawful retention and disclosure of classified information.
According to the committee, “the audio recordings, not the cold transcripts, are the best available evidence of how President Biden presented himself during the interview.” The lawmakers further assert that they need the recordings to “assess the Special Counsel’s characterization of the President, which he and White House lawyers have forcefully disputed.”
