Raising A Question of the Privileges of the House

Floor Speech

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Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Florida for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, the reason we are here, the reason that the Attorney General of the United States has already been held in contempt, is because Special Counsel Hur interviewed the President of the United States and the Attorney General provided to Congress, at our request, a transcript rather than an audio recording.

We believe the audio recording is necessary for us to understand the extent to which the President was able to answer the questions before him and why Special Counsel Hur chose not to pursue charges directly as a result of what he put forward as the likelihood that the President would not be found effectively competent to stand trial. We believe that is central to the question.

In terms of legislative purpose, what we are talking about here, by the way, is an impeachment inquiry and the tools of the House through the Judiciary Committee includes our ability to go forward and get the appropriate information, and we have a purpose which is the impeachment inquiry. It is nothing more. It is nothing less.

Now, in the Judiciary Committee, the Attorney General of the United States in a question that I asked him, his response was that the evidence was the same. The transcript and the audio were the same.

If that is true, then the Attorney General has no real basis, having already waived privilege on the transcript, not claimed privilege on the transcript, has no real basis for not giving the audio to the United States Congress to carry out its duty for an impeachment inquiry.

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