The White House recently moved to block access to the tapes.
The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, has filed an emergency motion in a Washington court seeking to accelerate the release of audio tapes of President Joe Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur, over which the White House recently asserted executive privilege.
The emergency motion, filed on May 17 at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeks to modify the court’s briefing schedule for three pending Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits that seek the audio recordings of roughly five hours of interviews that President Biden had with the special counsel in relation to a classified documents mishandling probe.
The motion seeks to speed up the court battle over the release of the tapes, with The Heritage Foundation arguing in the filing that President Biden’s assertion of executive privilege over the tapes on May 16 adds urgency to the FOIA lawsuits and that the Department of Justice (DOJ) didn’t need as much time to prepare its response to the FOIA requests as it previously claimed.
“The Department’s asserted time constraints were misleading,” The Heritage Foundation attorneys wrote in the motion. “The Department did not need the time to prepare a position and declarations it twice told the Court it did. A formal assertion of Executive Privilege is an extraordinary undertaking.”
U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly has set a schedule for the FOIA lawsuits that gives the DOJ until May 31 to submit filings in support of withholding the tapes. It also allows various other filings to be made through July 29. In their emergency motion, Heritage Foundation attorneys asked that the schedule be modified to give the DOJ until May 27 to make their arguments and that the deadline for all other filings be set at July 1.
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 faces contempt proceedings.
House Republicans have said that they want to obtain the recordings to verify Mr. Hur’s assertions that President Biden couldn’t recollect certain facts during the interview. They have alleged that a two-tiered justice system exists because Mr. Hur opted to not charge President Biden while former President Donald Trump faces multiple charges in connection with his own classified documents probe.
By Tom Ozimek
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