The House is going to spend half of this week on their revenge agenda for convicted felon Donald Trump, this time voting to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress. This is part of the mounting campaign among Republicans to enact retribution on President Joe Biden, his administration officials, congressional Democrats and anyone else Trump puts on his enemies list. It’s a precursor to what they’ll do if they maintain the House, win the Senate, and Trump wins.
The House will send the resolution against Garland to the Justice Department for criminal referral if it passes later this week. Which essentially means it’s going nowhere. The referral would go to the U.S. attorney who would be tasked with determining whether a crime was committed by Garland in refusing to turn over audio recordings of the interviews special counsel Robert Hur conducted with Biden in a classified documents inquiry, and if charges should be brought.
The U.S. attorney for D.C. is highly unlikely to find criminal action on Garland’s part, which would likely send the case to federal courts, and there wouldn’t be an outcome before the election. But if the election favors Republicans, Garland is going to be high on their list for locking up.
House Democrats have done a bang-up job of humiliating Republicans on this goose chase and are continuing to do so, but a little humiliation isn’t enough to deter them from doing Trump’s bidding.
“Desperate to blame someone—anyone—for the utter failure of this impeachment inquiry, Republicans have contrived an allegation that Attorney General Merrick Garland has impeded their impeachment inquiry by preventing them from hearing President Biden’s interview with Special Counsel Hur by withholding the audio recording,” Democrats on the Oversight Committee said in a statement.
“In fact, Republicans, and the American public, can already read the full content of that interview.”
That’s absolutely true—Garland released the transcripts when Hur testified before Congress, a hearing that turned out to be a flop for Republicans. They want that audio, though, to use to show Biden unfavorably in their televised hearings. This is why the Justice Department is refusing to cede to the demand. It’s also why Biden claimed executive privilege to block release of the tapes.
White House Counsel Ed Siskel blasted GOP lawmakers’ attempts to get the tapes, insisting that they have no legitimate purpose for acquiring them, only a political one “to chop them up, distort them, and use them for partisan political purposes.”
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