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The White House has blocked the release of audio from President Biden’s interview with a special counsel about his handling of classified documents, arguing that Republicans in Congress only wanted the recordings “to chop them up” and use them for political purposes. The House Judiciary Committee voted to advance an effort to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress for not turning over the records. The Justice Department has warned Congress that a contempt effort would create “unnecessary and unwarranted conflict.” The White House slammed Republicans in a letter, dismissing their efforts to obtain the audio as purely political. The attorney general advised Biden in a letter made public that the audio falls within the scope of executive privilege. The contempt effort is seen by Democrats as a last-ditch effort to keep Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into Biden alive. The transcript of the Hur interview showed Biden struggling to recall some dates and occasionally confusing some details. Hur’s report said many of the documents recovered at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, in parts of Biden’s Delaware home and in his Senate papers at the University of Delaware were retained by “mistake.”
