Image source, Getty Images
- author, Sam Cabral
- role, BBC News, Washington
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The U.S. House of Representatives voted Wednesday to indict Attorney General Merrick Garland for contempt of Congress.
The Republican-controlled House passed the resolution by a vote of 216-207, with only one Republican siding with the Democratic unified opposition.
Garland has refused to turn over interview tapes in a Justice Department investigation into President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents.
Responding to the contempt vote, he said House Republicans had “turned a vital congressional power into a partisan weapon.”
“Today’s vote ignores the constitutional separation of powers, the need for Department of Justice investigative protections, and the vast amount of information we have provided to the committee,” he said in a statement.
The nation’s top law enforcement officer has become the third attorney general in U.S. history and the fourth sitting Cabinet member overall to be charged with contempt of Congress.
The contempt resolution recommends that the Department of Justice decide whether to pursue criminal charges against Garland.
Under federal law, contempt is a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in prison and a $100,000 (£78,000) fine. Steve Bannon, a close aide to former president Donald Trump, faces four months in prison for contempt, while former Trump adviser Peter Navarro is already serving time for his own offence.
But Wednesday’s vote functions as a partisan exercise, given that Justice Department prosecutors are almost never likely to bring criminal charges against the head of their own agency.
Attorneys General William Barr and Eric Holder, who served in Republican and Democratic administrations respectively, have also been held in contempt of Congress on partisan grounds, though neither has been charged with a criminal offense.
But House Speaker Mike Johnson called the vote “an important step toward maintaining the integrity of our oversight process and accountability.”
Moderate Ohio Rep. David Joyce was the only Republican to vote against the resolution, as were all 206 Democrats present for the vote.
“As a former prosecutor, I cannot in good conscience support a resolution that would further politicize our justice system in order to score political points,” he said in a statement.
The move to hold Garland in contempt follows a years-long investigation by special counsel Robert Hur into Biden’s keeping of classified documents after he served as vice president.
Biden served as vice president in the Barack Obama administration from 2009 to 2017.
In a lengthy report released in February, Heo concluded that while it appeared Biden “knowingly” possessed classified materials as a private citizen, criminal charges were unjustified.
A prosecutor appointed by Garland said prosecutors would have a hard time securing a conviction against Biden because jurors would likely view him as “an old man with good intentions but a short memory.”
The remarks came after the president underwent a five-hour interview over two days with Heo’s team in October last year.
He said Biden was unable to recall specific details about the investigation or important events in his life, including his time as vice president and the death of his eldest son, Beau, from cancer.
The report’s release sparked a fierce political debate, with critics highlighting voter concerns about his age and sanity – among the president’s biggest weaknesses as he seeks reelection.
Biden’s legal team disputed the portrayal of the interview, accusing Heo of using “highly biased language to describe what is commonplace among witnesses – inability to recall events from years ago.”
Garland turned over full transcripts of his interviews to Republican lawmakers in March but has resisted subpoenas seeking audio recordings of the conversations.
On his advice, the president last month blocked Republican lawmakers from accessing the tape of the interview, invoking “executive privilege,” a doctrine that gives the president the right to conceal executive branch information from the other two branches of government.
Garland argued that handing them over “could chill cooperation with police in future investigations.”
In congressional testimony last week, he blasted the Republican contempt action as “only the latest in a long line of attacks” on his agency’s operations.
Republicans have argued that the Biden administration is using the Justice Department as a “weapon” against political opponents, a reference primarily to the criminal prosecution of former President Donald Trump.
This comes despite the fact that Garland’s Justice Department is also indicting Biden’s son Hunter and two current Democratic congressional representatives.
“The Department of Justice is under attack like never before,” the attorney general wrote in an op-ed in The Washington Post on Tuesday.
He pointed to an increase in “conspiracy theories, lies, violence and threats of violence” against agency officials by Republican critics.
“The short-term political gains of these tactics cannot make up for the long-term losses to our country,” he said.
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