EXCLUSIVECould AG Merrick Garland be arrested? Republican mother Rep. Anna Paulina Luna says she was on bed rest after first child when she cooked up unique plan to hold Biden cabinet secretary accountable
While she was recovering from the birth of her first child and unable to vote, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna learned of an obscure House procedure that could see Attorney General Merrick Garland arrested.
Frustrated that the DOJ hasn't acted on the House holding Garland in criminal contempt earlier this month, she will force a vote on an 'inherent contempt resolution' this week.
The criminal contempt resolution referred Garland to his own Justice Department for criminal charges after he refused to hand over the audio of Biden's special counsel interview.
But the DOJ quickly announced it will not act on the prosecution recommendation.
If Luna's resolution is passed, it could force Garland to stand trial before the House, and if found guilty, he would be detained by the House Sergeant-at-Arms.
While she was recovering from the birth of her first child and unable to vote, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna learned of an obscure House procedure that could see Attorney General Merrick Garland arrested
Inherent contempt which was last used in 1934 on Washington Lawyer William MacCracken, who spent 10 days in prison for refusing to comply with a Senate subpoena.
'I was told I couldn't vote when I was recovering from having my son ... what I found is a lot of members were unaware that it actually existed. And so I met the parliamentarian because I did not have faith in the DOJ.'
Luna was the only member this Congress to have a child while in office.
'Garland is currently running cover — at the risk of making himself essentially a criminal via Biden — for Biden's objective to stay in office at all costs, even though it's very evident that they're hiding something from the American people,' she told DailyMail.com in an interview.
House Republicans had issued two subpoenas for audio recordings of Biden's interview with special counsel Robert Hur about his mishandling of classified documents and his interviews with ghost writer Mark Zwonitzer.
The DOJ claimed it had been overly accommodating to House Republicans and their probes, handing over a transcript of Biden's interview.
But Republicans are skeptical of the transcript's accuracy.
'It is essential for us to conduct our investigation to ensure that they are being honest, that the transcripts haven't been doctored, and then see, I think that there's a major concern that there's some cognitive issues with Biden.'
Frustrated that the DOJ hasn't acted on the House holding Garland in criminal contempt, Luna will force a vote on her inherent contempt resolution this week
Since Luna will make the resolution 'privileged' it won't have to follow normal procedures, passing through committee and then waiting for leadership to put it on the House floor.
Luna said she met with Speaker Mike Johnson about the inherent contempt, and he prefers to work through the court system to try to force DOJ to turn over the transcripts.
With the narrowest of majorities in the House, Republicans will need nearly all of their side's votes for the resolution to pass. On Monday morning Luna sent a letter to her colleagues explaining the need for a 'yes' vote on her legislation.
'The Department of Justice and the attorney general cannot be the ultimate deciders of whether or not a congressional subpoena is enforced. If Congress allows this to happen, we risk being subordinated to the attorney general and being completely neutered in our ability to legislate,' Luna argued. '
Why would anyone from the executive branch comply with our demands for information if the enforcement of those demands relies on the actions of another department in its own branch?'
The House-wide vote to hold Garland in criminal contempt got support from all Republicans except Rep.Dave Joyce, R-Ohio, who worried it would politicize the justice system.
During the interview, said that Biden appeared 'elderly' with a 'poor memory' as he and had a series of other stumbles.
'I was told I couldn't vote when I was recovering from having my son ... what I found is a lot of members were unaware that it actually existed. And so I met the parliamentarian because I did not have faith in the DOJ,' said Luna
'That nice old man with a poor memory is in charge of our nuclear launch codes, and more importantly, supposed to be representing us on a world stage,' Luna said.
'When you have someone who's in that position who might not have the best memory or might not be cognitively there, our adversaries know that. And you can see with the withdrawal from Afghanistan, shortly thereafter, China and Russia both are kind of going up to the United States in our foreign policy. And you saw the invasion in Ukraine. You saw October 7 happen. It feels like the or the world is in chaos right now because of it.'
