WASHINGTON — The Justice Department said Friday it would not prosecute U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland for not providing lawmakers with audio of President Joe Biden’s interview with a special counsel.
House Republicans approved a contempt of court ruling against Garland for allegedly defying their subpoena, but the department said Friday in a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La. .) that Garland’s response to the subpoena “did not constitute a crime.”
Garland had given Republicans a transcript of Biden’s interview with former special counsel Robert Hur, as well as other documents requested by Republicans, but he said handing over the audio would harm law enforcement by making people less likely to cooperate in future investigations .
Republicans said they needed the audio to verify the transcript, which some lawmakers dubiously argued might have been edited to protect Biden from criminal liability.
Garland appointed Hur last year to investigate Biden’s retention of classified documents after he left the vice presidency in 2017, essentially setting up a parallel investigation into former President Donald Trump’s document hoarding after he left the White House in 2021 had left.
Hur determined in a report this year that he would not have a strong case against Biden, partly because of legal arguments the president could make and partly because he would appear to a jury as an “older man with a bad memory.”
The transcript showed aides helping Biden put certain life events into chronological order; the White House has said Republicans only want the audio for attack ads.
(Trump, in turn, did not cooperate with investigators as Biden did and is charged with obstruction of justice on top of charges of intentionally retaining national defense information.)
The Justice Department’s refusal to prosecute its own director came as no surprise, as Biden had asserted executive privilege over the Hur recording to protect it from public dissemination.
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