The Department of Justice says it won’t provide Congress with the audio tapes from Special Counsel Robert Hur’s interviews with President Joe Biden despite threats from House Republicans to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in criminal contempt.
In a new letter obtained by CNN, DOJ said it would not be turning over the audio tapes by the deadline Republicans set for them. The department noted the committees already have all of the transcripts of the interviews they requested from Hur’s investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents, including the transcripts of interviews with the president and with his ghostwriter, which the department turned over Monday.
It’s not yet clear if House Republicans will carry out their threat to hold Garland, a top GOP target, in contempt of Congress for failing to fully comply with a congressional subpoena. CNN has reached out to the committees of jurisdiction for comment.
“We urge the Committees to avoid conflict rather than seek it,” Assistant Attorney General Carlos Felipe Uriarte wrote in a letter to the committees, arguing that the department has complied with the requests.
“Our productions on each of the four subpoena items have met or exceeded the committee’s stated informational needs,” he wrote.
Uriarte said Republicans did not have a legislative justification for subpoenaing the audio tapes given they have the transcripts and accused Republicans of escalating the issue as “conflict for conflict’s sake.”
“The Department is concerned that the committees’ particular focus on continuing to demand information that is cumulative of information we already gave you — what the President and Mr. Hur’s team said in the interview — indicates that the committees’ interests may not be in receiving…
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