On Thursday, President Biden invoked executive privilege to block Republican members of the House of Representatives from obtaining recordings of his questioning by special prosecutor Robert Hur regarding handling of classified documents. White House legal advisor Edward Siskel wrote to the House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan stating that the President decided to exercise executive privilege over these recordings to protect the integrity, effectiveness, and independence of the Department of Justice and its law enforcement investigations.
Assistant Attorney General Carlos Uriarte also informed Comer and Jordan in a letter on Thursday that the President had invoked executive privilege over the requested recordings and declared protective privilege over all other materials requested but not yet provided.
The long-standing position of the executive branch of the bipartisan government is that criminal charges should not be brought against officials claiming executive privilege for contempt of Congress offenses, Uriarte continued in the letter.
Executive privilege is a legal principle that protects certain records of the executive branch from disclosure, a right held by the President and other members of the executive branch to maintain confidential communications within the executive branch in certain circumstances and to resist subpoenas and other oversight measures from the legislative and judicial branches when investigating specific information or personnel related to those confidential communications.
Biden’s move came hours before Republican members of the House were set to convene a meeting to consider a resolution that would charge Attorney General Merrick Garland with contempt of Congress for failing to produce documents subpoenaed by the House Judiciary Committee and Oversight Committee. The Oversight Committee was prepared to hold a procedural vote on the resolution on Thursday.
Siskel accused Republican members of the House in the letter of seeking recordings of Biden’s conversations with Hur for “partisan political purposes.”
Last October, Hur conducted a two-day interview with Biden regarding his handling of classified documents. Before testifying publicly before Congress in March, the special prosecutor submitted a transcript of the interview to Republican members of the House.
While the special prosecutor’s 345-page investigation report recommended no charges be brought against Biden, it described some instances of decline in Biden’s memory, sparking a political storm as such descriptions were seen as detrimental to Biden’s reelection campaign.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jordan stated on Thursday that despite receiving the White House’s notice of executive privilege earlier in the day, his committee would continue with the process of holding Garland in contempt of Congress. In his opening remarks at the committee discussion, he said, “This last-minute invocation doesn’t change the fact that the Attorney General did not comply with our subpoena.”
The committee subsequently voted along party lines, with an 18-15 outcome, to pass the resolution officially holding Garland in contempt of Congress.
The Oversight Committee is expected to take a similar action later in the evening. Originally planning to consider the resolution around the same time as the Judiciary Committee, the Oversight Committee decided to delay the deliberation and voting until 8 p.m. due to many Republican members being in New York supporting former President Trump in the “hush money case” trial.