WASHINGTON — The Republican-controlled House on Wednesday narrowly voted to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress, a significant escalation in the GOP’s warfare towards a justice machine the birthday celebration has portrayed as unfairly focused on Donald Trump.
The vote was once 216-207, with one Republican, Rep. David Joyce of Ohio, becoming a member of all Democrats in vote casting no. Seven Democrats and one Republican didn’t vote.
At factor was once Garland’s failure to hand over audio of particular recommend Robert Hur’s interview with President Joe Biden about his dealing with of categorized paperwork. Republicans had demanded the audio after Hur declined to prosecute Biden, in section, as a result of a jury would possibly sympathize with him as an “elderly man with a poor memory.”
Democrats countered that the total transcript of the Biden interview has already been launched to the general public, and so they sounded warnings that Republicans may manipulate the audio.
Despite the a success contempt vote, it’s in large part a political workout. Biden and his management have asserted govt privilege in refusing to hand over the audio, all however getting rid of the likelihood that Garland could be prosecuted for ignoring the subpoenas. It’s additionally unprecedented for Justice Department prosecutors to move after the pinnacle in their company over a contempt factor.
Last month, each the House Judiciary and Oversight committees licensed a document recommending that the House hold Garland in contempt for defying congressional subpoenas pertaining to the audio recording. After Wednesday’s vote, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., argued that the pair of committees want the audio tapes to examine the accuracy of the transcripts.
“It is up to Congress — not the Executive Branch — to determine what materials it needs to conduct its own investigations, and there are consequences for refusing to comply with lawful Congressional subpoenas,” Johnson said in a statement. “Congress has a responsibility to conduct oversight of the Special Counsel’s work and specifically Special Counsel Hur’s determination not to prosecute President Biden for the clear violation of the law.”
Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said Republicans are targeting Garland after they failed to come up with enough evidence to impeach Biden.
“What do our Republican friends do when an investigation turns up short? Simply put, they engage in fantasy. That’s what they’re doing here today. Unable to come up with any wrongdoing by the president, they have now trained their sights on the attorney general,” Nadler mentioned.
“This isn’t really about a policy disagreement with the DOJ. This is about feeding the MAGA base after 18 months of investigations that have produced failure after failure,” Nadler continued. “This contempt resolution will do very little other than smear the reputation of Merrick Garland, who will remain a good and decent public servant no matter what Republicans say about him today.”
The full House vote was always going to be a nail-biter given the GOP’s paper-thin majority. Even with Rep. Vince Fong, R-Calif., having been sworn in last week to fill the vacancy left by former Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s resignation, the Republicans can afford only two GOP defections on any vote. Just three GOP no votes would have killed the contempt effort with all members voting.
Joyce, the only Republican who voted against contempt, said in a statement that he couldn’t support the politicization of the justice system.
“As a former prosecutor, I cannot in good conscience support a resolution that would further politicize our judicial system to score political points,” Joyce said. “The American people expect Congress to work for them, solve policy problems, and prioritize good governance. Enough is enough.”
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and his leadership team had expressed confidence about their whip count as they moved contempt to the floor. A handful of vulnerable Republicans, including Reps. Mike Lawler and Marc Molinaro of New York, said they would vote yes. Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., another top Democratic target in November, voiced reluctance about contempt but said he also would support it, arguing that the public deserves to hear the audio.
“I wish this could be settled without a contempt vote. But, the Attorney General owes the American people the audio recording regardless. When Special Prosecutor Hur showed that President Biden willfully kept classified info in his house and garage, then the comparisons with what DOJ is prosecuting President Trump on becomes more similar,” Bacon said in a statement.
“Trump is being prosecuted, but Hur claims President Biden is too elderly with a bad memory to ever be taken to court. This is a very significant claim to make concerning our current President and the Democrat nominee,” Bacon added. “The citizens deserve to evaluate this for themselves.”
Garland isn’t the first attorney general to be held in contempt by a House controlled by the opposing party. The House voted to hold Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, in contempt of Congress in 2019, while it held Barack Obama’s AG, Eric Holder, in contempt in 2012 over his refusal to hand over documents related to the Fast and Furious probe.
Neither were prosecuted.
However, Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, suggested House Republicans could sue to obtain the audio recording of Biden.
“We suppose that is going to finish up in court docket,” Jordan said before Wednesday’s vote, adding: “We suppose our case is powerful and we predict that we can be successful.”
This week’s contempt vote is just the latest push by Republicans to portray a “two-tiered” justice system — one that criminally prosecutes and convicts Trump but lets Biden off the hook. House Republicans have railed against what they see as the “weaponization” of government and the justice system against Trump and his allies, even forming a special weaponization committee to investigate.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday, the Justice Department secured a conviction against the president’s son Hunter Biden on gun charges, and the Justice Department is leading prosecutions against two Democratic members of Congress on bribery charges.
Roughly a year ago, a federal grand jury indicted Trump on dozens of felony counts related to his handling of classified documents after his presidency.
But on Feb. 8, Hur announced that, following a monthslong probe, he would decline to prosecute Biden for his handling of classified documents. Hur said Biden’s practices of retaining and disclosing classified material after he was vice president “present serious risks to national security.” But he explained that he didn’t pursue charges because it would be difficult to get a jury to convict him — “through then a former president smartly into his eighties — of a significant legal that calls for a psychological state of willfulness.”
Garland testified sooner than the House Judiciary Committee remaining week that he had equipped the panel with the Hur document, allowed Hur to testify “for more than five hours” and “gone beyond precedent” to give the committee the transcripts of the Hur-Biden interview.
But Garland argued that turning over the audio recording would “chill cooperation with the department in future investigations” and “could influence witnesses’ answers if they thought the audio of their law enforcement interviews would be broadcast to Congress and the public.”
Garland went on to condemn the contempt push, calling it “only the most recent in a long line of attacks on the Justice Department’s work.”
“It comes alongside threats to defund particular department investigations, most recently the special counsel’s prosecution of the former president. It comes alongside false claims that a jury verdict in a state trial by a local district attorney was somehow controlled by the Justice Department,” Garland persevered, referring to the New York hush cash case towards Trump. “That conspiracy theory is an attack on the judicial process itself.”