The House Judiciary Committee voted to move forward with an effort to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress hours after the White House blocked access to an audio recording of President Joe Biden’s interview with the special counsel who oversaw an investigation into his handling of classified documents.

The House panel voted Thursday afternoon to advance the contempt maneuver. A similar vote is scheduled for later Thursday with the House oversight committee.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE.

  • Optional@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    “The absence of a legitimate need for the audio recordings lays bare your likely goal — to chop them up, distort them, and use them for partisan political purposes,” White House counsel Ed Siskel wrote in a scathing letter to House Republicans ahead of scheduled votes by the two House committees to refer Garland to the Justice Department for the contempt charges.

    Oh please, it’s not like they’d spend years and millions on some kind of political theatre for absolutely no reason. Just because they have. Often.

    • grue@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      More bad-faith whataboutism from the traitor caucus trying to paint Biden as a criminal to excuse/distract from Trump’s criminality, I assume.

    • NOT_RICK@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Republicans want the audio from Biden’s deposition regarding the classified documents investigation he underwent six months or so ago. They already have the full report from the special prosecutor that found there was no grounds for charges. The justice department blocked that request, invoking executive privilege.

      I feel pretty strongly that they just want the audio to use in attack ads for the upcoming election.

      • macarthur_park@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Also worth noting they already have the transcripts too. So there’s literally no information being withheld. They transparently just want the audio to make soundbites.

        • njm1314@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Did it never occur to them to just hire an actor to read it out loud for their campaign ads? Hell you don’t even have to sound like Biden their voters will believe it if they say it.

    • ghostdoggtv@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Republicans are trying to exfiltrate an audio file that they can use out of context and feed into AI deep fake generators for summer and fall disinformation. They already have transcripts of the content of the recording, they’re just being petty tyrants.

    • dhork@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      This is about that special counsel investigation, where no charges were filed against Biden but the guy said some things about Biden’s memory. The Justice Department already released the full transcript of the interviews with Biden, but the committee has asked for the audio too, and Garland has declined to sent it over.