Recommending That the House of Representatives Find United States Attorney General Merrick B. Garland in Contempt of Congress for Refusal to Comply with A Subpoena Duly Issued By the Committee on the Judiciary

Floor Speech

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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

During his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, Special Counsel Hur stated that ``the evidence and the President himself put his memory squarely at issue.'' In his report, Special Counsel Hur noted that during both his and Zwonitzer's interviews with President Biden, the President's memory was ``significantly limited.'' President Biden has contested that. The Democrats contest that.

In reality, it is the failure to fully comply with committee subpoenas regarding the audio recordings of the Biden and Zwonitzer interviews that has hindered the House's ability to adequately conduct oversight over Special Counsel Hur regarding his investigative findings and the President's retention and disclosure of classified materials, and it has impeded the committee's impeachment inquiry.

The committee must assess whether Special Counsel Hur's declination decision, which was based on President Biden's poor mental state, was consistent with the Department's commitment to impartial justice or whether legislative reforms are necessary regarding special counsel investigations because they are not leading to impartial outcomes.

In short, the audio recordings would offer unique and important information to advance the committee's impeachment inquiry and inform the Judiciary Committee as to the need for legislative reforms to the operations of the Department or the conduct of special counsel investigations.

Those are legislative purposes. They are constitutional purposes. They justify us getting the audio recordings. Yet, they don't want the audio recordings to come forward. Why is that? It is odd, isn't it? The DOJ admitted in court filings 2 weeks ago that they actually did alter the transcript. They claim there was just filler information. Maybe they were duplicative words. There are blank pauses in there that were not noted in the transcript.

That is why an audio recording is important because the transcripts do not reflect important verbal context such as tone, tenor, or nonverbal context such as pauses or pace of delivery, all of which went into the decision by Mr. Hur not to prosecute a crime that he said was committed.

That prosecutorial discretion is under review by our committee, legitimately and constitutionally. We have the right to that audio recording. The Department has said they are not going to give it to us--odd--because the cases that deal with requiring the audio recording to be turned over, the long skein of cases, turn on various things like the audio recording is the best evidence. They say that. Odd.

They also say that if there is tampering or any kind of editing or altering of the written transcript, which we now know is true, then the audio recording is mandatory. That is why we should get it. This Department won't give it to us. Merrick Garland is in contempt of this Congress, and he needs to be held in contempt.

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