Republicans voted on Wednesday to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress over the Justice Department’s refusal to turn over audio recordings of interviews President Joe Biden gave to Special Counsel Robert Hur. The 216-207 vote came down largely on party lines. In January of last year, Garland appointed Hur , a Donald Trump appointee, to lead the DOJ’s investigation into classified documents found at Biden’s home and office.
The investigation took place amid a parallel probe into Trump’s own retention of classified documents that resulted in a criminal indictment against the former president. In February, Hur announced that the Justice Department would not be pursuing criminal charges against President Biden, with Hur describing him “as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” Hur claimed that Biden could not “remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended (‘if it was 2013 — when did I stop being Vice President?’), and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began (‘in 2009, am I still Vice President?’).
” Hur also wrote that Biden did not remember “even within several years” when his son Beau died. The Biden administration condemned Hur’s characterizations of the president’s interviews, with Special Counsel to the President Richard Sauber and Biden’s personal attorney Bob Bauer writing that they “do not believe that the r.