Biden rejects Republican request for audio of his classfied docs interview
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Republicans in Congress have been demanding the tapes of the October deposition with Special Counsel Robert Hur.
PHOTO: AFP
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WASHINGTON - US President Joe Biden refused on May 16 to turn over audio of his questioning by investigators probing his handling of classified documents in an interview that led to bombshell accusations that the 81-year-old Democrat was mentally frail.
Republicans in Congress have been demanding the tapes of the October deposition with Special Counsel Robert Hur, who interviewed the President extensively for his inquiry into Mr Biden’s retention of the records.
Mr Hur concluded in February that charges were not warranted but made the politically explosive claim that Mr Biden had “limited precision and recall” and would likely be seen by a jury as “a sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory”.
The Justice Department and White House counsel said in letters to two Republican House committee chairmen that Mr Biden was asserting executive privilege over the recordings.
Republicans have spotlighted Mr Hur’s comments about Mr Biden’s memory,
White House counsel Ed Siskel said Mr Biden was claiming executive privilege over the recordings to protect the “integrity, effectiveness and independence of the Department of Justice and its law enforcement investigations”.
The move comes with an impeachment inquiry into Mr Biden over allegations of corruption floundering following a series of hearings led by House Republicans that failed to demonstrate any wrongdoing by the Democratic leader.
Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee advanced a resolution holding Attorney-General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress after the Justice Department refused to hand over the tapes.
The Oversight Committee – the other of the two main House investigative panels – was expected to follow suit in the late evening. The resolution in any case heads to the full House floor for a vote, at a date yet to be set.
‘Partisan political purposes’
Judiciary Committee Republicans claimed the government’s rejection of their demand was politically motivated to protect the President.
But the Justice Department has already released transcripts of the interviews and argues that Republicans want the tapes simply to use in campaign ads supporting Trump.
“The absence of a legitimate need for the audio recordings lays bare your likely goal – to chop them up, distort them, and use them for partisan political purposes,” Mr Siskel said in his letter to the committees.
Mr Garland appointed Mr Hur in January 2023 to investigate Mr Biden, and the special counsel concluded that – while the President improperly retained classified papers after his vice-presidential term ended in 2017 – no criminal charges were justified.
The Justice Department – which is run by Mr Garland – will not act on the contempt charges, meaning the issue is set to end up in the civil courts, likely stalling the case beyond this Congress.
Republicans have a razor-thin majority in the House of Representatives, and Democrats hope to seize control of the lower chamber of Congress in November’s elections.
“To determine whether special counsel has appropriately carried out justice by not prosecuting – not recommending for prosecution – the president, the recordings are necessary,” said Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan.
“The transcripts alone are not sufficient evidence of the state of the president’s memory, frankly, because the White House has a track record of altering the transcripts.”
Mr Jordan’s Democratic counterpart Jerry Nadler accused him of wasting US$20 million (S$27 million) on “his various conspiracy theories”, targeting Mr Biden to deflect from wrongdoing by Trump, who faces 88 felony charges – almost half of which are for allegedly hoarding classified documents.
“In reality, the special counsel cleared Mr Biden of wrongdoing,” Mr Nadler said. “The chairman hoped he could intimidate prosecutors out of indicting Donald Trump for his crimes.”
The oversight committee meeting was pushed back to 8pm local time (8am on May 17, Singapore time) to accommodate a group of Republicans who travelled to New York on May 16 for the latest session of Trump’s hush money trial,
