Internal Justice Dept. memo claims Merrick Garland cannot be prosecuted for contempt of Congress

The memo, obtained by The Hill, was issued by the department’s Office of Legal Counsel. It states that for nearly seven decades, the Executive Branch has maintained that the criminal contempt of Congress statute does not apply to Executive Branch officials who refuse to comply with a congressional subpoena if a president claims executive privilege.

“Consistent with this longstanding position, no US Attorney has pursued criminal contempt charges against an Executive Branch official asserting the President’s claim of executive privilege,” the memo read.

President Biden and his administration previously invoked executive privilege to withhold audio recordings related to an investigation into President Biden's handling of classified documents by Special Counsel Hur, where Hur decided not to prosecute Biden, citing that a jury would see him as an "elderly man with a poor memory."

On Wednesday, the House of Representatives officially voted to hold Garland in contempt of Congress for refusing to provide the audio recordings of Biden's interview. The Biden administration has continued to argue that the audio need not be released because the written transcript is available, something the memo included as well.

“Because the committees have the transcripts of the special counsel’s interviews, the needs the committees have articulated for the recordings are plainly insufficient to overcome a privilege claim grounded in these important separation of powers concerns,” the memo declared.

“The audio recording will not reveal any information relevant to the committees’ stated needs that is not available in the transcripts,” it claimed.

However, it was previously reported that the transcript had been altered by the White House. Earlier this month, The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project released a court filing indicating that edits were made to remove Biden’s repeated use of filler words like “um” or “uh."

The DOJ has also attempted to argue that the audio recording should not be released because it would be vulnerable to artificial intelligence and deepfake technologies.