On Sunday, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) revealed the next steps to hold U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland accountable after he withheld audiotapes of special counsel Robert Hur’s interview with Joe Biden, and the Department of Justice declined to prosecute him over that withholding.
Congress recently resolved to hold Garland in contempt after he refused to grant access to those tapes from that series of interviews, relating to Biden’s alleged mishandling of classified documents. However, the DOJ declined to prosecute Garland over the withholding.
Luna appeared on “Sunday Morning Futures With Maria Bartiromo” to discuss the resolution and aftermath. Fox host Maria Bartiromo began by asking Luna about what the “next move” would be after GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson said he would push for the issue to be brought to federal court, bypassing the DOJ’s refusal.
“Yeah, so actually several months ago I introduced a resolution for something called ‘inherent contempt of Congress,’” Luna began. “This is something that Congress has the authority to do and it hasn’t been done since the early 1900s. Essentially what that does is — I anticipated that the Department of Justice would not do their job, so I had this teed up and ready to go. I brought this to Speaker Johnson’s attention and what that allows Congress to do is really be the punitive arm and really hold Garland accountable by using the sergeant-at-arms to essentially go and get him as well as the tapes, bring them to the well of the House and really be a check and balance on the Department of Justice.”
“Again, this has been done since the early 1900s, but that vote will be coming to the floor and hopefully we will be able to bring some accountability. I know that if this goes to [the] courts as Johnson has stated that’s really going to get stuck there, it’s not going to do anything. The American people deserve more than strongly worded letters, I think we’re all frustrated and so again we’re hoping to bring that accountability,” she added.
Bartiromo also asked why Republicans were so insistent on retrieving the audiotapes from Garland, as transcripts of the interaction already exist. She then asked Luna if she believed the tapes could be edited, as filler words such as “um” and “ah” were confirmed to have been edited out.
“I believe that it’s possible that it’s been doctored, but I also think it’s going to show the American people whether or not Biden is capable of making those decisions. Remember, we have a foreign policy debacle right now. We have Russian warships off of our coast and if he is not able to stand fit as president — I don’t think that he’s going to be the nominee this November. I think that’s why Democrats are trying to protect him and the DOJ,” Luna said.
Bartiromo then asked, “So you don’t think he’s gonna be the nominee?”
“Not if these tapes come out, no Maria. I think that they have big problems and I think that his cognitive inability is the number one issue for them currently,” Luna responded.
On Wednesday, Congress voted to hold Garland in contempt 216-207 after he refused subpoenas issued by the Committee on the Judiciary and the Committee on Oversight and Accountability to give them the audiotapes. The White House has insisted that lawmakers don’t need the tapes as transcripts are available.
“The House disagrees with the assertions in the letter from the Department of Justice, and as Speaker, I will be certifying the contempt reports to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. We will also move to enforce the subpoena of Attorney General Garland in federal court,” Johnson wrote in a post on X. “It is sadly predictable that the Biden Administration’s Justice Department will not prosecute Garland for defying congressional subpoenas even though the department aggressively prosecuted Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro for the same thing. This is yet another example of the two-tiered system of justice brought to us by the Biden Administration.”
The post Florida Rep Reveals Next Steps In Garland Accountability Fight After DOJ Declines To Prosecute appeared first on Resist the Mainstream.
Click this link for the original source of this article.
Author: John Symank
This content is courtesy of, and owned and copyrighted by, https://resistthemainstream.org and its author. This content is made available by use of the public RSS feed offered by the host site and is used for educational purposes only. If you are the author or represent the host site and would like this content removed now and in the future, please contact USSANews.com using the email address in the Contact page found in the website menu.