The move comes just hours before the two House panels are set to begin drafting a resolution to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt.
WASHINGTON—President Joe Biden has asserted executive privilege over the tapes of his two-day interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur in his probe of the president’s alleged mishandling of classified information.
The tapes are at the center of a dispute between House Republicans and Attorney General Merrick Garland, who has defied a subpoena for them and today faces contempt proceedings.
Mr. Garland, in a May 15 letter to the president, said that the “committee’s needs are plainly insufficient to outweigh the deleterious effects that the production of the recordings would have on the integrity and effectiveness of similar law enforcement investigations in the future.”
Assistant Attorney General Carlos Felipe Uriarte asked Republican leaders not to continue with the contempt proceedings.
“It is the longstanding position of the executive branch held by administrations of both parties that an official who asserts the president’s claim of executive privilege cannot be held in contempt of Congress,” Mr. Uriarte wrote to House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) in a May 16 letter.
President Biden’s counsel accused House Republicans of wanting the tapes for political purposes.
“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. Demanding such sensitive and constitutionally-protected law enforcement materials from the Executive Branch because you want to manipulate them for potential political gain is inappropriate,” wrote Ed Siskel, President Biden’s counsel, to Mr. Comer and Mr. Jordan in a separate May 16 letter.
In a statement, Mr. Comer slammed President Biden’s move as politically motivated and reiterated that his committee will move forward with the resolution to hold Mr. Garland in contempt of Congress.
“It’s a five-alarm fire at the White House,” he said. “Clearly President Biden and his advisors fear releasing the audio recordings of his interview because it will again reaffirm to the American people that President Biden’s mental state is in decline.”
The House Judiciary Committee posted a video from a hearing with this caption: “The Biden Administration is trying block our Constitutional oversight.”
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