By It’s a good rule of thumb that you can predict the next corrupt move from the Biden White House by looking at what they claimed Donald Trump would do with power.
Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr were often accused of corruption, with some claiming that the attorney general served to protect the president rather than following the law.
For example, in 2019, The Associated Press wrote, “Barr is the nation’s top law enforcement officer and leads a Cabinet department that traditionally has a modicum of independence from the White House.
Yet to Trump, there often appears to be little difference between the two lawyers.
Kathleen Clark, a legal ethics professor at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, said Trump is treating the country’s attorney general as if he’s just another personal lawyer.
‘I think it represents a larger problem with President Trump,’ she said. ‘To him, it appears Giuliani and Barr both have the same job.’”
Fast forward four years, and now Merrick Garland is helping save Joe Biden from embarrassment.
President Joe Biden has asserted executive privilege to block House committees from obtaining audio recordings of his own interviews with special counsel Robert Hur about Biden’s handling of classified documents, writes Politico.
The White House counsel’s office notified House GOP investigators of the move hours before Republicans were expected to recommend holding Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress for refusing to hand over the audio. Rather than changing the GOP’s plan, the privilege assertion sparked a wave of outrage from Republicans, who are moving forward with their planned contempt vote.
Hur’s description of his interviews with Biden — laid out in a 345-page report released in February — fueled a firestorm over the president’s memory and mental fitness. In that report, Hur said Biden could potentially defend himself in court, if charges were recommended, by appealing to jurors as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” Biden pushed back with a fiery news conference defending his acuity.
While the transcripts of the interviews have already been released, Biden’s effort to block the recordings puts him in a politically awkward position: He has insisted that Hur has mischaracterized the interviews but is nonetheless trying to maintain secrecy over the raw audio.
Democrats have long insisted that behind closed door Biden is extremely sharp and with it, but for some reason they never want to show any video of that.
Even though much of Biden’s claims about the interview have been debunked already, the audio most likely reveals why the special counsel referred to Biden as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
The fight for the tapes will not likely be over, however, and Democrats only have themselves to blame. MxM Media noted that Biden tossed away some executive privilege when it was time to try and pin January 6 on the former president and his chief rival.
“The White House argues that Republicans in Congress only want the recordings to use them for political purposes, with the dispute over access to the recordings central to a Republican effort to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress.
Garland has advised Biden that the audio falls within the scope of executive privilege, which protects a president’s ability to obtain candid counsel from his advisers without fear of immediate public disclosure.
Real Clear investigative journalist Julie Kelly however tweeted, “Joe Biden repeatedly denied Trump’s claims of privilege in authorizing NARA to turn over presidential records to Congress. Biden claimed Congress’ investigation into Jan 6 “insurrection” outweighed presidential privilege claims…So now House GOP has a framework of recent case law to challenge Biden’s privilege claims related to denying Congress the recording of his interview with Robert Hur–by using Biden’s own words.”
https://twitter.com/julie_kelly2/status/1791104466764042645
As one commentator has explained, “Note that these tapes are not personal — they are evidence collected in investigating Biden’s illegally-hoarded classified documents, and therefore are the investigatory property of the taxpayers of the US.
In US v. Nixon, the Supreme Court decided that Nixon did not have the right to hide the “Nixon tapes” from the public.
The decision was unanimous, 8-0. Eight, because the chief justice Rehnquist recused himself.”
The last-second move by the White House will not deter House Republicans from holding Garland in contempt of Congress for his refusal to hand over the tapes.
“House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican and a close ally to presumptive 2024 Republican nominee Donald Trump, said the last-minute invocation did not change the fact that Garland has not complied with the subpoena.
“Now today, this morning, we get an 11th hour invocation of executive privilege,” he said. “President Biden is asserting executive privilege for the same reason we need the audio recordings: They offer a unique perspective.”
The Judiciary Committee moved forward with a markup, in which Democrats and Republicans exchanged barbs about the mental acuity of the other party’s presidential nominee. The Oversight Committee has set a similar markup for later Thursday,” Roll Call reported.
[Read More: Warren Caught In Peak Hypocrisy]
