Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice is still refusing to hand over the recordings of interviews between Special Counsel Robert Hur and President Joe Biden. The bombshell interview transcripts cited Biden as an “elderly man with a poor memory” when he was questioned about his mishandling of classified documents.
Hur defended his description of Biden at the time.
“My assessment in the report about the relevance of the President’s memory was necessary and accurate and fair,” Hur said. “I did not sanitize my explanation. Nor did I disparage the President unfairly. I explained to the Attorney General my decision and the reasons for it. That’s what I was required to do.”
After the transcripts were reviewed, it was clear Biden’s memory is vastly compromised — Biden even forgot when his son died and when he was Vice President.
Due to the explosive nature of the transcripts, House Judiciary Chair Jim Comer and House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer requested the audio recordings of the interview.
But Garland’s DOJ has stonewalled the committees and they have made it clear they don’t think Jordan and Comer should have access to the actual recordings.
“The Committees have already received the extraordinary accommodation of the transcripts, which gives you the information you say you need. To go further by producing the audio files would compound the likelihood that future prosecutors will be unable to secure this level of cooperation,” wrote Carlos Felipe Uriarte, the assistant attorney general for legislative affairs, in the letter denying the committees’ requests. “[Prosecutors] might have a harder time obtaining consent to an interview at all. It is clearly not in the public interest to render such cooperation with prosecutors and investigators less likely in the future.”
Now, according to Axios, Republicans are threatening to hold Garland in contempt for not producing the audio. The DOJ says the GOP chairs are looking for trouble.
“We are therefore concerned that the Committees are disappointed not because you didn’t receive information, but because you did. We urge the Committees to avoid conflict rather than seek it,” Assistant Attorney General Carlos Felipe Uriarte said in a letter to Comer and Jordan.
The audio recordings of the interview would be the surest way to assess Biden’s mental acuity — and perhaps that’s just why the GOP will never hear them.
