Biden asserts executive privilege over audio of Robert Hur interview in classified documents probe

The White House on Thursday informed Republican members of Congress that it would assert executive privilege over an audio recording of the president’s interview with Robert Hur, the special counsel who investigated how classified documents ended up at President Joe Biden’s Delaware home and former office in Washington, DC.

Republicans on the House Oversight Committee and House Judiciary Committee had demanded that Attorney General Merrick Garland turn over the recording, which was made over a two-day period during which Mr Biden answered questions from Mr Hur and his team about his handling of classified documents.

But the White House has rejected the demand, telling Judiciary Committee chair Jim Jordan and Oversight Committee chair James Comer that Mr Biden has instead heeded Mr Garland’s request to deny the GOP-led panels access to the tapes on executive privilege grounds.

The attorney general had told the president that  “audio recordings of your interview … fall within the scope of executive privilege” in an earlier letter to Mr Biden .

Separately, Assistant Attorney Genral Carlos Uriarte had told Mr Comer and Mr Jordan in a different letter that the GOP plan to hold Mr Garland in contempt of Congress would not have any legal validity, citing “the longstanding position of the executive branch held by administrations of both parties that an official who asserts the President’s claim of executive privilege cannot be prosecuted for criminal contempt of Congress”.

The president’s decision, which will both block the recordings from Congress and effectively shield Mr Garland from criminal contempt of Congress charges that could come from a House vote expected later on Thursday, is in line with actions by previous administrations, including those of former presidents George W Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump.

Still, it is expected that Republicans will nonetheless claim that the decision is politically motivated — the same sort of motivation to which the White House credits the GOP demand for the recordings.

In a letter to Mr Comer and Mr Jordan which was obtained by The Independent, White House counsel Edward Siskel admonished the committee chairs for what he described as their turning the investigations against the president into a circus accused them of seeking to “undermine the very independence and impartiality of the Department of Justice”.

Mr Siskel went on to note that the White House had not asserted privilege over the release of Hur’s report to Congress, nor had it blocked Hur from sitting for a marathon hearing with lawmakers in the Judiciary and Oversight committees.

In his report, Mr Hur said he’d found evidence that Mr Biden had mishandled classified materials found stored at his home and at a DC-based office. But the former Trump-appointed US Attorney wrote that he had not found that Mr Biden had done so “wilfully” — and had therefore not met the legal standard under which he could be charged.

He also did not recommend criminally charging Mr Biden in part due to the perceived difficulty of convincing a jury that he intentionally violated the law — in other words, because the government’s case against the president would have been weak and difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.

The decision was a blow to Republicans, who have sought any and all avenues to embarrass the incumbent president as their own candidate for the White House faces a historic 88 felony charges including two criminal prosecutions related to his attempt to thwart the peaceful transfer of power in 2020.

Nonetheless, the House committees have been pushing for the recording despite having the transcript of Mr Biden’s words in hopes of using the audio content in campaign advertisements meant to damage him politically.

Mr Siskel told Mr Comer and Mr Jordan that the transcripts and other written materials that they’ve already received “more than satisfy [their] articulated needs for this information”.

He also noted that neither chair had articulated a legitimate legislative purpose for the audio recordings.

“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. Demanding such sensitive and constitutionally-protected law enforcement materials from the Executive Branch because you want to manipulate them for potential political gain is inappropriate,” he said.