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The White House on Thursday blocked the release of audio from President Joe Biden’s interview with a special counsel about his handling of classified documents, arguing Thursday that Republicans in Congress only wanted the recordings “to chop them up” and use them for political purposes.

Biden’s move to assert executive privilege came shortly before the Republican-led House committees on Judiciary and Oversight met to advance a motion to refer Attorney General Merrick Garland to his own Justice Department for a contempt of Congress charge for refusing to hand over the recording.

The House Judiciary Panel voted along party lines to advance the referral measure on Thursday, and House Oversight Committee followed suit later that evening. 

“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,” White House counsel Ed Siskel wrote in a scathing letter to House Republicans.

“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,” Siskel added.

Garland separately advised Biden in a letter made public Thursday that the audio falls within the scope of executive privilege, which protects a president’s ability to obtain candid counsel from his advisers without fear of immediate public disclosure and to protect confidential communications relating to official responsibilities.

Speaking to reporters Thursday morning, Garland said: “People depend on us to ensure that our investigations and our prosecutions are conducted according to the facts and the law and without political influence. We have gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure that the committees get responses to their legitimate requests, but this is not one.”

Garland added that the effort to hold him in contempt is the latest in “a series of unprecedented and, frankly, unfounded attacks on the Justice Department.”

The Justice Department warned Congress that a contempt effort would create “unnecessary and unwarranted conflict,” with Assistant Attorney General Carlos Uriarte saying: “It is 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 held in contempt of Congress.

In a February report he submitted to Attorney General Merrick Garland, Hur wrote that his investigation “uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.”

Justice Department policy protects a sitting president from being charged with crimes, but Hur said, even if he could, he would not recommend prosecuting Biden because the evidence did not prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, adding, “Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” comments Republicans have seized upon.

A transcript from the Biden interview have already been made public. But House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, argued those are not sufficient in determining whether Hur acted appropriately in not recommending charges, accusing the White House of having “a track record of altering transcripts.”

Rep. Dan Bishop, R-N.C., said it is “an incomprehensibly absurd position” that the White House would assert executive privilege for the audio recording after the transcript has already been released.

“That tape must be quite something if the administration of the president has decided to assert executive privilege to keep it from the committee in the course of an impeachment inquiry,” he said.

Bishop added that the transcript does not capture “demeanor evidence” such as hesitations in answering questions.

Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., argued that Biden’s conversation with an investigator should not be protected by executive privilege. 

“It’s crystal clear to me that any official discussion between the president and any subordinate cannot be pierced,” he said. “But this case is very different because it’s not a conversation between the president and a subordinate over policy or the discharge of his official duties. Rather, it’s an interview in the course of a criminal investigation. To me, this is far closer to the Nixon tapes.”

Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, defended Garland, saying “substantially complied with every request” made by House Republicans about the Hur investigation.

“The only thing that has not been produced is the recording itself, which can be easily manipulated,” Nadler said. “ … This isn’t really MAGA base and getting Donald Trump reelected.”

Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., said Republican assertions that the transcript could not be trusted are unfounded.

“There is no evidence whatsoever that this transcript was made up, that it’s fake, that it’s been doctored,” he said. “This transcript was produced by Robert Hur’s office. Robert Hur was appointed by Donald Trump. He is a Republican appointee. The notion that somehow this transcript is fake is a wild, insane conspiracy theory.”

Hur was a senior official in the Trump Justice Department, but was appointed special counsel in the Biden classified documents case by Garland in January 2023.

Siskel’s letter to lawmakers comes after the uproar from Biden’s aides and allies over Hur’s comments about Biden’s age and mental acuity, and it highlights concerns in a difficult election year over how potentially embarrassing moments from the lengthy interview could be exacerbated by the release, or selective release, of the audio.

The transcript of the interview showed Biden struggling to recall some dates and occasionally confusing some details — something longtime aides says he’s done for years in both public and private — but otherwise showing deep recall in other areas. Biden and his aides are particularly sensitive to questions about his age. At 81, he’s the oldest ever president, and he’s seeking another four-year term.

Hur’s report said many of the documents recovered at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, in parts of Biden’s Delaware home and in his Senate papers at the University of Delaware were retained by “mistake.”

But investigators did find evidence of willful retention and disclosure related a subset of records found in Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, house, including in a garage, an office and a basement den.

The files pertain to a troop surge in Afghanistan during the Obama administration that Biden had vigorously opposed. Biden kept records that documented his position, including a classified letter to Obama during the 2009 Thanksgiving holiday. Some of that information was shared with a ghostwriter with whom he published memoirs in 2007 and 2017.