WASHINGTON — The Justice Department confirmed Friday, as expected, that Attorney General Merrick Garland will not be charged after Republicans in the House of Representatives voted to hold him in contempt of Congress for refusing to release audio tapes of President Joe Biden available that are protected by executive privilege.
“As you know, the President has exercised his executive privilege and directed the Attorney General not to release materials subpoenaed by the House Committees on the Judiciary and Oversight and Accountability (Committees) regarding the investigation that was conducted by Special Counsel Robert K. Hur,” Assistant U.S. Attorney General Carlos Felipe Uriarte wrote in a letter Friday to House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La.
“The Department’s long-standing position is that we will not prosecute an official for contempt of Congress for refusing to provide subpoenaed information subject to a presidential assertion of executive privilege, as explained in our May 16, 2024 letter to the committees,” Uriarte said. wrote. “Throughout administrations of both political parties, we have consistently maintained the position that ‘the contempt of the Statute of Congress did not apply and could not constitutionally be applied to an executive branch official asserting the President’s claim to executive privilege. ‘
The letter noted that then-Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross were not prosecuted after the House voted to hold them in contempt in 2019. In 2022, the Justice Department also declined to prosecute former Trump White House officials Mark Meadows and Dan. Scavino, who did not cooperate with the commission’s Jan. 6 subpoenas.
Congress already has a transcript of Biden’s interview with Hur, who investigated the president’s handling of classified documents. Hur declined to prosecute Biden, writing in his report that one reason for not pursuing the case was so that Biden would be sympathetic to a jury because he could portray himself as an “older man with a poor memory.” Hur also said the evidence his team collected “does not conclusively establish Mr. Biden’s guilt.”
Garland wrote last month that giving the recordings to Congress “would pose an unacceptable risk of undermining the Department’s ability to conduct similar high-profile criminal investigations — particularly those involving the voluntary cooperation of White House officials.” Home is extremely important.” He told reporters that releasing audio tapes “would harm our ability to successfully conduct sensitive investigations in the future.”
Garland pushed back against Republican attacks on the justice system and the DOJ, calling them “unprecedented” and “baseless” during a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee this month. The Justice Department, he said, “will not shy away from defending democracy.
Johnson’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
