During a press conference on Wednesday, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson told reporters that the House intends to sue the Department of Justice for Special Counsel Robert Hur’s audio recordings of his interviews with Joe Biden.
“We are going to file suit next week against the Department of Justice to enforce that subpoena. We will go to district court here in D.C., which is the appropriate venue, and we will fight vigorously to get it,” Johnson told reporters.
From The Washington Times:
The transcript of the interview was already released, but Mr. Johnson, Louisiana Republican, said they needed the audio to verify what the transcript says.
“We need it. We’ve talked about it here with this group before, is that we’ve got to have the audiotape to confirm what is on the written transcript,” he said.
Attorney General Merrick Garland has refused the GOP’s subpoena for the audio, citing the president’s executive privileges. The House voted earlier this month to hold Mr. Garland in contempt for refusing to turn over the audio of the interview. The Justice Department declined to prosecute Mr. Garland for contempt.
“As you know, the President asserted executive privilege and directed the Attorney General not to release materials subpoenaed by the House Committees on the Judiciary and Oversight and Accountability (Committees) related to the investigation conducted by Special Counsel Robert K. Hur,” Assistant Attorney General Carlos Felipe Uriarte wrote in a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson earlier this month.
“The longstanding position of the Department is that we will not prosecute an official for contempt of Congress for declining to provide subpoenaed information subject to a presidential assertion of executive privilege, as explained in our May 16, 2024, letter to the Committees,” Uriarte wrote. “Across administrations of both political parties, we have consistently adhered to the position that ‘the contempt of Congress statute was not intended to apply and could no constitutionally be applied to an Executive Branch official who asserts the President’s claim of executive privilege.”
Speaker Mike Johnson says House plans to sue DOJ for Biden interview tapeshttps://t.co/gBIGSdUWTr pic.twitter.com/G3qMhbLYVz
— The Washington Times (@WashTimes) June 26, 2024
