House Judiciary Committee sues DOJ for Biden-Hur interview recordings

House Republicans asked a federal judge on Monday to make the Justice Department hand over audio tapes of two conversations between President Joe Biden and federal investigators. Justice Department special counsel Robert Hur interviewed Biden on October 8 and 9 of last year while investigating whether Biden unlawfully retained and disclosed classified documents he’d kept from his time as vice president.

Hur concluded his investigation with a report urging the DOJ not to prosecute Biden. He explained that a jury would likely view the president as an elderly man with memory issues and find he didn’t intentionally mishandle the documents. House Republicans are also asking the court to make the Justice Department release the audio recordings of Hur’s conversations with the ghostwriter of President Biden’s 2017 memoir Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose.

Why do Republicans want the audio tapes? The executive branch has already released transcripts of Hur’s interviews with Biden. Still, House Republicans say the audio recordings will help them understand the president’s mental abilities during the conversations. They argue they need confirmation that Hur’s assessment of Biden’s mental state was correct. Republicans say it's especially important they confirm Hur’s assessment since another DOJ special counsel has moved forward with charges against former President Donald Trump, Biden’s main opponent in the 2024 presidential election.

Why aren’t the audio tapes public already, just like the transcripts? Earlier this year, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland encouraged Biden to claim executive privilege over the recordings, and the White House did so. The House of Representatives later held Garland in contempt of Congress for not releasing the recordings. Garland claimed that the tapes would not provide House Republicans with any information they didn’t already have in the transcripts. Garland also argued that publishing the recordings would discourage witnesses in future investigations from letting Justice Department officials record conversations with them.

What are Republicans arguing in this lawsuit? The House Judiciary Committee argued that the recordings would provide more information about the president’s intonation when answering questions and any pauses he had while answering questions. And unlike a written transcript, recordings cannot be manipulated by a human’s editorial discretion, the Committee said.

Republicans also argued Biden waived his executive privilege to withhold the recordings when the executive branch released the interview transcripts. Republicans also argued it defied common sense to believe witnesses in future investigations would worry about the department publishing recordings of their meetings with investigators when the department has already shown it could release transcripts of those conversations.

Dig deeper: Read Carolina Lumetta’s report in The Stew about Democrats’ concern over Biden’s mental acuity after a lackluster performance in his recent debate against former President Donald Trump.