As the House Oversight Committee and Judiciary Committee gear to hold Assistant Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress, President Joe Biden invokes executive privilege on audio recordings on special counsel Robert Hur’s probe on his mishandling of classified documents.
In a letter on Thursday addressed to the 81-year-old President, Garland told Biden that his precious tapes are within the scope of executive privilege. He wrote, “[the] committee’s needs are plainly insufficient to outweigh the deleterious effects that the production of the recordings would have on the integrity and effectiveness of similar law enforcement investigations in the future.”
Assistant Attorney General Carlos Felipe Uriarte also weighed in on the issue and threatened lawmakers to hold any contempt effort against Merrick to avoid, “unnecessary and unwarranted conflict.”
“It is the longstanding position of the executive branch held by administrations of both parties that an official who asserts the president’s claim of executive privilege cannot be held in contempt of Congress,” Uriarte wrote.
In a separate letter, White House Counsel Ed Siskel blasted the Congress and alleged that the lawmakers intend “to chop them up, distort them, and use them for partisan political purposes.”
The Biden administration’s actions toward the hearing and the audio recording are enough to support the claims that there are indeed portions of the interview that could put the Democratic Party’s presumptive presidential nominee in a bad light.
In the transcript provided by Special Counsel Hur, Biden struggled to recall relevant dates while confusing some details, which his longtime staff claimed he had done for years. He is the oldest president and hopes to extend his term in the Oval Office.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Kentucky) blasted Biden’s argument and said: “It’s a five-alarm fire at the White House.”
“Clearly President Biden and his advisers fear releasing the audio recordings of his interview because it will again reaffirm to the American people that President Biden’s mental state is in decline,” Comer quipped.
For Senator Ted Cruz, Biden’s effort to block the oversight committee from obtaining audio recordings of him with Hur “is laughable.”
Cruz highlighted that the executive privilege is inapplicable in this case where Biden is under investigation if he committed felonies or crimes.
“By the way, Robert Hur, the special counsel appointed to investigate that, concluded, yes, he did violate the law. He committed multiple felonies. He did so knowingly. He did so willingly. He did so repeatedly.”
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Author: The Raging Patriot
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