GOP to sue DOJ for Biden special counsel audio — in which he forgot date of son’s death — next week
House Speaker Mike Johnson announced Wednesday that Republicans will sue President Biden’s Justice Department within days for recordings of the commander-in-chief’s interview last fall with special counsel Robert Hur.
“We are going to file suit next week against the Department of Justice to enforce that subpoena,” Johnson (R-La.) said during a Wednesday press conference.
The speaker told reporters that Republicans would “fight vigorously” to obtain audio tapes of the special counsel’s Oct. 8-9 interview with Biden, 81, over his decision to hold onto classified material after his vice presidency.
In another Wednesday press conference, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) said she was moving forward with a vote to force the House sergeant-at-arms to arrest Attorney General Merrick Garland if he doesn’t produce the tapes.
All but one House Republican voted earlier this month to hold Garland in contempt for denying access to the Biden interview recordings after the White House asserted executive privilege.
The DOJ later announced it would not prosecute Garland following the contempt vote, forcing Johnson and the GOP to consider other avenues for enforcing their subpoena for the audio files.
“It is sadly predictable that the Biden Administration’s Justice Department will not prosecute Garland for defying congressional subpoenas even though the department aggressively prosecuted Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro for the same thing,” Johnson said in a statement at the time.
“This is yet another example of the two-tiered system of justice brought to us by the Biden Administration.”
Former President Donald Trump’s Attorney General Bill Barr and former President Barack Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder were also held in contempt of Congress — but never prosecuted.
On Tuesday night, Johnson told Fox News host Sean Hannity that House Republicans were filing an amicus brief on behalf of Bannon, the former Trump White House strategist, as he appeals his contempt of Congress conviction for flouting a subpoena from the House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
“We’ve been investigating the committee itself; we disagree with how Speaker [emerita Nancy] Pelosi put all that together,” Johnson said.
“We think it violated House rules and so we will be expressing that to the court, and I think it will help Steve Bannon and his appeal.”
Bannon is fighting his conviction ahead of a July 1 deadline to report to prison for a four-month sentence.
Navarro, a former trade adviser to the Trump White House, is serving a four-month sentence in a Miami federal prison for ignoring a subpoena from the same House committee.
Conservative groups and media outlets have also gone to federal court to seek access to the special counsel tapes, which Justice Department officials have admitted in court filings contain “minor” differences from an already released transcript of Biden’s interview with Hur.
Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who authored a 2008 letter cited by the Justice Department as a reason for withholding the recordings, has called the White House assertion of executive privilege “flawed.”
“I believe the public has an overwhelming interest in hearing the audio recording and that that interest in disclosure overwhelms any conceivable intrusion on the President’s privacy interests,” Mukasey wrote in a court declaration filed as part of the non-congressional suit.
Mukasey added that the audio recordings will likely shed light on the president’s “mental acuity” and other attributes that led to Hur’s decision not to charge Biden in February even after he “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials.”
