National News
WASHINGTON (AP) — Speaker Mike Johnson said Friday the House will seek judicial enforcement of Attorney General Merrick Garland's subpoena to review the audio interview of President Joe Biden's special counsel, just hours after the Justice Department declined to prosecute Republicans on contempt of Congress charges.
“It is unfortunately predictable that the Biden administration's Department of Justice will not prosecute Garland for contempt of congressional subpoenas, even though the department has aggressively prosecuted Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro for the same matter,” Johnson said in a press release to The Associated Press. “This is another example of the two-tiered justice system that the Biden administration has given us.”
In a letter to Johnson earlier Friday, a Justice Department official cited the agency's “longstanding position and consistent practice” of not prosecuting officials who fail to comply with subpoenas since the president invokes executive privilege.
The Democratic President last month asserted executive privilege to forestall the discharge of the audio recording, which Republicans say the White House wants just for political reasons. Republicans pushed ahead with the contempt effort anyway, voting Wednesday to punish Garland for his refusal to release the recording.
Deputy Attorney General Carlos Felipe Uriarte noted that under presidents of each political parties, the Justice Department has refused to initiate prosecutions in similar cases when there was a claim for executive privilege.
Accordingly, the department “will not bring the charge of contempt of Congress before a grand jury or take any other steps to prosecute the Attorney General,” Uriarte said within the letter to Johnson. The letter didn’t specify who on the Justice Department made the choice.
Republicans were outraged when special counsel Robert Hur declined to prosecute Biden for his handling of classified information and immediately launched an investigation.
Republican lawmakers, led by Representatives Jim Jordan and James Comer, sent a subpoena for audio files of Hur's interviews with Biden, however the Justice Department turned over only a portion of the documents and omitted the audio file of the interview with the president.
Republicans accuse the White House of keeping the tape under wraps because they consider the president is afraid voters might hear it in an election 12 months.
A Jordanian spokesman criticized the Justice Ministry's move on Friday, saying: “The rule of law applies to you, but not to me.”
A transcript of the Hur interview shows that Biden had difficulty remembering some dates and infrequently confused some details – something he has been doing for years each in private and non-private, based on longtime aides – but otherwise showed good recall in other areas. Biden and his aides are particularly sensitive to questions on his age. At 81, he’s the oldest president ever and is looking for one other four-year term.
The attorney general said the Justice Department made extraordinary efforts to tell lawmakers about Hur's investigation. But Garland said releasing the audio recordings could jeopardize future sensitive investigations because witnesses could be less willing to cooperate in the event that they knew their interviews could grow to be public.
In a letter last month detailing Biden's decision to invoke executive privilege, White House counsel Ed Siskel accused Republicans of looking for the records so that they could “dismember” and deform them to attack the president. Executive privilege gives presidents the fitting to maintain information secret from the courts, Congress and the general public to guard the confidentiality of selections, although it might probably be challenged in court.
The Justice Department noted that it also shunned prosecuting Attorney General Bill Barr, who was charged with contempt of court in 2019. The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives voted to question Barr after he refused to release documents related to an investigation into former President Donald Trump.
Similarly, the Justice Department declined to prosecute former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows after he was charged with contempt of Congress for ceasing to cooperate with the committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Years earlier, then-Attorney General Eric Holder was charged with contempt of court in reference to the arms smuggling operation generally known as Operation Fast and Furious. The Justice Department also took no motion against Holder.
Two former Trump White House aides, Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon, were charged with contempt of Congress for ignoring subpoenas issued by the committee on January 6. They were each found guilty at trial and sentenced to 4 months in prison. Navarro has been behind bars since March and Bannon was ordered to report back to prison by July 1.
The special counsel within the Biden case, Hur, spent a 12 months investigating the president's improper retention of classified documents from his time as a senator and vp. Hur said he didn’t find enough evidence to successfully take the case to trial.
Hur pointed to Biden's limited memory and the president's cooperation with investigators, which “could convince some jurors that he made an innocent mistake.” Hur's report also described the president as “someone the jury will want to find reasonable doubt about.”
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Associated Press reporter Farnoush Amiri in Washington contributed.
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