GOP Sues for Biden Interview Audio on Classified Documents

(DailyVantage.com) – The GOP is looking to the courts now to gain access to the audio files of the interview of President Joe Biden regarding his classified documents investigation, after the Justice Department refused to honor a congressional subpoena for the files.

The lawsuit is being filed by House Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee against Attorney General Merrick Garland, as the U.S. Department of Justice has refused to release the audio files of the president’s interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur, who was tasked to head the investigation into the discovery of several classified documents in Biden’s private office and home. The president and his staff have been dismissive of the incident, saying that it was a mistake committed by a negligent staffer, and the files were not taken with any malicious intent.

Hur made similar allusions in his report, calling the president a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man” but one “with a poor memory” which resulted in the misplacing of the documents in question. Hur added that it would be difficult to convince a jury that Biden committed any intentional crime given that it would require a ”mental state of willfulness” that he implied that the president did not have. As such, the special counsel said that he would not recommend that any charges be filed against President Biden.

House Republicans, however, were not satisfied with the report, and demanded that the Justice Department hand over its audio recording of Hur’s interview with the president. The DOJ did hand over, however, transcripts of the interview.

As the members of the GOP in Congress continue with their impeachment investigation into the president, House general counsel Matthew B. Berry said that the refusal of the DOJ to provide the audio files “impermissibly impede” the House Judiciary Committee’s efforts to conduct its “constitutionally delegated oversight and impeachment functions.”

For its part, the Justice Department said that declined to follow the congressional subpoena over concerns that handing over the recordings would set a precedent that would imperil the confidentiality of other investigations, both in the past and in the future.

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