House Republicans on Wednesday rammed through a bill recommending that Attorney General Merrick B. Garland be held in contempt of Congress for failing to comply with a subpoena.
Republicans acted over Democratic objections after the Justice Department refused to provide audio recordings of interviews between Biden and a special counsel investigating his handling of classified documents. The House voted 216-207 along near party lines to punish Garland in a move to force the executive branch to turn over the materials.
“We must protect the Constitution. We must protect the authority of Congress,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said before the vote. “We cannot allow the Department of Justice and the executive branch to hide information from Congress.”
The move comes less than two weeks after former President Donald J. Trump was convicted of a felony in New York for falsifying business records to hide hush money payments to porn actresses and at a time when Republicans are increasingly alleging that Biden’s Justice Department is waging a vendetta against conservatives, particularly party leaders.
“It is deeply disappointing that the House has turned a vital congressional power into a partisan weapon,” Garland said in a statement.
“I will always defend this department, its employees and its important mission of protecting our democracy,” he added.
The only Republican to vote “no” was Rep. David Joyce of Ohio, leader of the mainstream Republican bloc in Congress, who said after the vote that as a former prosecutor he could not support a bill that would “further politicize our justice system.”
Given the highly polarized nature of the modern Congress, a finding of contempt of court has become almost a rite of passage for attorneys general: Democrat Eric H. Holder Jr. was convicted of contempt of court in 2012, and Republican William P. Barr was convicted of contempt of court in 2019.
Neither case was prosecuted by the Department of Justice.
At issue now are audio recordings of interviews Biden gave with Robert K. Hur, the special counsel investigating Biden’s handling of classified documents. In a politically explosive report, Hur concluded that Biden should not face criminal prosecution but included a line that gave Republicans major political ammunition, calling the president a “well-meaning old man with a bad memory.”
The Justice Department has already released transcripts of Biden’s interviews with Huh, but House Republicans have argued they need the records to continue their impeachment investigation and examine the president’s mental health.
“This is not a complicated issue,” said Sen. James R. Comer, a Republican from Kentucky who chairs the Oversight Committee. “The Oversight and Judiciary Committees have issued duly authorized legal subpoenas to Attorney General Garland seeking specific documents, including audio recordings of Special Counsel Harr’s meetings with President Biden. The Attorney General has refused to turn over those recordings.”
Democrats have argued the contempt case is an attempt to distract attention from Republican efforts to impeach Biden.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York, the Judiciary Committee’s top Democrat, argued that Garland had turned over more than enough documents to Republicans – more than 92,000 – and that the attorney general had been too amenable to GOP demands.
“Failing to find wrongdoing by the president, they are now targeting the attorney general,” Nadler said. “They are accusing the attorney general of hiding key evidence, yet the attorney general has complied with virtually all of their demands. In my opinion, the attorney general has sometimes been too soft on the ball, given the clear venom of the MAGA majority.”
But Comer noted that it’s not just Republican lawmakers who want the audio: Media organizations are suing to gain access to the recordings.
Garland has resisted, arguing that releasing the audio could set a precedent that would jeopardize the confidentiality of other law enforcement investigations. Democrats also argue that Republicans have no legitimate legislative purpose in seeking the audio and simply want to use the footage in campaign ads.
Biden last month asserted executive privilege to deny House Republicans access to the recordings, a move aimed at shielding Garland from prosecution.
The contempt case now goes to the US attorney in Washington to consider whether to file charges. Under federal law, contempt of Congress is a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of $100 to $100,000 and one month to one year in prison.
It’s unlikely that prosecutors will pursue criminal charges. The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel wrote in a letter that the department has long held the view that criminal contempt charges do not apply under the Constitution to executive branch officials who ignore subpoenas after the president has invoked executive privilege over the materials at issue.
The Justice Department also cited executive privilege in dropping charges against Garland’s predecessors, Barr and Holder.
But the Justice Department has dealt with contempt cases at other times.
During the last Congress, the Department of Justice indicted two of the four Trump aides who were subpoenaed on contempt charges for refusing to cooperate with the House committees investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. The two are Peter Navarro, who was convicted of contempt and is currently serving a four-month sentence, and Stephen K. Bannon, who has been ordered by a federal judge to turn himself in by July 1 to begin serving his four-month sentence on the same charge.
Rep. Adam B. Schiff, the California Democrat who led the first impeachment inquiry into President Trump, argued Wednesday that Republicans have politicized the committee process beyond recognition and are now baselessly attacking an honorable man.
“Those who introduce this motion certainly invite contempt, but only to themselves,” Schiff said.
