OAN’s Brooke Mallory
5:01 PM – Monday, March 25, 2024
In response to the Justice Department’s failure to turn over subpoenaed audio recordings of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s interview with President Biden as part of the probe into his handling of classified documents, House Republicans have threatened to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) issued a letter to Garland on Monday.
“The Department continues to withhold additional material responsive to the Committees’ subpoenas—specifically the audio recordings of Special Counsel Hur’s interviews with Biden and the transcript and audio recordings of Special Counsel Hur’s interviews with Mr. Zwonitzer,” Comer and Jordan wrote. “The February 27 subpoenas create a legal obligation on you to produce this material.”
Jordan and Comer asserted that they expect Garland “to produce all responsive materials no later than 12:00 p.m. on April 8, 2024.” “If you fail to do so, the committees will consider taking further action, such as the invocation of contempt of Congress proceedings,” they continued.
Comer and Jordan served the Justice Department with a subpoena demanding audio recordings and a transcript of Hur’s conversation with Biden.
The DOJ sent two heavily redacted transcripts of Hur’s discussions with Biden to the committees only hours before Hur was due to appear in public earlier this month.
The audio recordings of the interviews were not produced by the Justice Department, though. The committees “specifically prioritized” the creation of the audio recordings, according to Comer and Jordan.
Mark Zwonitzer was subpoenaed by Comer and Jordan last week. Zwonitzer is required by the subpoena to provide all records and correspondence with Biden or his team pertaining to his ghostwriter work on the memoirs “Promise Me, Dad” and “Promises to Keep,” including call logs, emails, and more.
Zwonitzer is also required by the subpoena to produce all relevant contracts and agreements, as well as audio recordings of his interviews and talks with Biden and transcripts of those conversations.
Hur’s report, which was made public last month, contradicts the president’s claims that he did not give Zwonitzer access to classified materials. It says that Biden would “read from his notebooks nearly verbatim, sometimes for an hour or more at a time,” and that “at least three times President Biden read classified notes from national security meetings” to Zwonitzer “nearly verbatim.”
Hur testified earlier this month that, after discovering that a special counsel had been appointed to look into the incident, Zwonitzer “slid” files of audio recordings and transcripts of discussions with Biden “into his recycle bin on his computer.”
During Hur’s public trial earlier this month, Jordan questioned if the ghostwriter attempted to “destroy the evidence.”
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