The release of Special Counsel Robert Hur's report on President Joe Biden's alleged mishandling of classified documents in early February sparked widespread controversy.
Conservatives expressed dissatisfaction with the decision not to prosecute, equating Biden's actions with those of former President Donald Trump, who is currently facing a criminal indictment in Florida. Liberals, on the other hand, took issue with Hur's portrayal of Biden's declining mental faculties.
In the wake of the report, the House Oversight Committee requested the Department of Justice (DOJ) to grant access to the classified documents in question "to determine if they were used to help the Bidens influence-peddling schemes." The committee, in conjunction with the Judiciary and Ways and Means committees, also asked the DOJ to release transcripts and recordings of Hur's interviews with Biden. On February 27, the Oversight and Judiciary committees issued subpoenas to the DOJ for Hur's interview records, including transcripts, notes, video, and audio files.
In response to the subpoenas, the DOJ provided only partial records. Consequently, the committees are now considering holding Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt. On Monday, the committees sent a letter to Garland outlining the timeline of requests and the DOJ's failure to comply with the subpoenas.
The letter, which can be read in full here, includes the following highlights:
"However, on March 7, 2024, the subpoenas return date, the Department provided the Committees with an insufficient production that only included letters exchanged between President Bidens legal counsel and the Department, along with an offer to review two classified documents."
"On March 12, 2024, between 7:43 a.m. and 7:45 a.m.a little more than two hours before Special Counsel Hurs scheduled testimonythe Department produced to the Committees two redacted transcripts of Special Counsel Hurs interviews with President Biden. The Department failed to produce the audio recordings of the interviews, which the Committees specifically prioritized in our March 9 letter."
The letter also alleges that several news outlets received and reviewed the transcripts of Hur's interviews with Biden before they were provided to the committees. The committees speculate that the Department and the White House, the only two entities with copies of the transcripts before the committees received them, may have provided the transcripts to news outlets for political purposes before completing the "interagency review" process.
The committees have given the DOJ until noon on April 8 to comply with the subpoenas, warning that failure to do so may result in the invocation of contempt of Congress proceedings.
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