The Justice Department on Monday strongly rejected Republican demands for audio recordings of President Joe Biden’s interview with the special prosecutor who investigated his mishandling of classified documents, going so far as to accuse Republican lawmakers of having requested the recordings for purely political reasons.
Top DOJ official Carlos Uriarte this week sent a letter to Republican committee chairmen Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Rep. James Comer of Kentucky reprimanding the deadline party leaders had set for the agency. Jordan and Comer subpoenaed the recordings after Hur released his report in February.
In Monday’s letter, Uriarte pointed out that lawmakers already have access to the full transcripts of the interview, according to multiple media outlets.
“Requesting the audio tapes when you have the transcripts is very unusual,” Matthew Schmidt, an assistant professor of political science and national security at the University of New Haven, told Business Insider.
Special counsel Robert Hur questioned Biden in October about classified documents found in 2022 at his Delaware home and in an office he used after leaving office. In his final report, Hur said their two-day discussions played a role in his decision not to charge Biden in the case, even though he determined that Biden had voluntarily kept classified government documents after leaving office in some cases.
Hur cited the lack of evidence to charge Biden criminally, but Republicans focused on Hur’s suggestion that a possible prosecution of Biden after the presidency could make him a sympathetic defendant because of his age and problems of apparent memory.
“Republicans were expected to use the audio tapes to essentially show that Biden was suffering from dementia or senility based on his voice or his words,” Schmidt said.
“This could essentially serve as raw material for campaign ads,” he added.
Uriarte appeared to make a similar claim in Monday’s letter, suggesting that Republicans might not be interested in collecting evidence but were instead asking that the recordings “serve political purposes that should play no role in role in handling law enforcement cases,” the Washington Post reported. , quoting the letter.
Uriarte said the department had met or exceeded his subpoena requests in the case and accused Republicans of escalating the situation by calling it “conflict for conflict’s sake,” according to CNN.
Schmidt said it was unusual for Justice Department officials to level such egregious accusations against lawmakers. The tone of the letter, he added, is further evidence of the divided and partisan political makeup of the country today.
Business Insider reported in March that transcripts of Biden’s conversation with Hur suggest that criticism of the president’s memory is exaggerated and actually highlights his sense of humor under pressure.
Biden’s handling of classified documents is unlikely to be a major campaign pillar for Republicans and former Republican President Donald Trump in the next election, Schmidt predicted.
But Biden’s age is another story.
“That’s why Republicans think it’s so important that they get their hands on these tapes,” Schmidt said. “Because transcripts retain a lot of information at the human level.”
Republicans have threatened to sue Attorney General Merrick Garland for criminal contempt for failing to fully comply with their subpoena — yet another sign of America’s increasingly fractured political system, Schmidt said.
“In general, I think that would be going too far,” he said. “But it’s an election year. It might make political sense to go that far.”
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