Ferdja Ferdja.com delivers the latest news and relevant information across various domains including politics, economics, technology, culture, and more. Stay informed with our detailed articles and in-depth analyses.
WASHINGTON — The Justice Division confirmed Friday, as anticipated, that Legal professional Normal Merrick Garland is not going to face fees after Home Republicans voted to hold him in contempt of Congress for declining to offer audiotapes of President Joe Biden which might be protected by executive privilege.
“As you already know, the President asserted govt privilege and directed the Legal professional Normal to not launch supplies subpoenaed by the Home Committees on the Judiciary and Oversight and Accountability (Committees) associated to the investigation carried out by Particular Counsel Robert Ok. Hur,” Assistant Legal professional Normal Carlos Felipe Uriarte wrote in a letter to Home Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., on Friday.
“The longstanding place of the Division is that we are going to not prosecute an official for contempt of Congress for declining to offer subpoenaed info topic to a presidential assertion of govt privilege, as defined in our Might 16, 2024, letter to the Committees,” Uriarte wrote. “Throughout administrations of each political events, we’ve constantly adhered to the place that ‘the contempt of Congress statute was not meant to use and will no constitutionally be utilized to an Government Department official who asserts the President’s declare of govt privilege.”
The letter famous that then-Legal professional Normal William Barr and Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross weren’t prosecuted after the Home voted to hold them in contempt in 2019. In 2022, the Justice Division additionally declined to prosecute former Trump White Home officers Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino, who didn’t cooperate with the Jan. 6 committee’s subpoenas.
In a press release on the Justice Division’s determination, Johnson mentioned that he would transfer to certify the contempt reviews to the D.C. U.S. legal professional and implement the subpoena of Garland in federal court docket.
“It’s sadly predictable that the Biden Administration’s Justice Division is not going to prosecute Garland for defying congressional subpoenas though the division aggressively prosecuted Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro for a similar factor,” Johnson continued within the assertion. “That is yet one more instance of the two-tiered system of justice dropped at us by the Biden Administration.”
Congress already has a transcript of Biden’s interview with Hur, who investigated the president’s dealing with of categorized paperwork. Hur declined to prosecute Biden, writing in his report that one motive to not go ahead with the case was that Biden could be sympathetic to a jury as a result of he may painting himself as an “elderly man with a poor memory.” Hur additionally mentioned the proof his crew gathered “doesn’t set up Mr. Biden’s guilt past an affordable doubt.”
Garland wrote final month that giving the recordings to Congress “would elevate an unacceptable threat of undermining the Division’s capacity to conduct comparable high-profile legal investigations — particularly, investigations the place the voluntary cooperation of White Home officers is exceedingly essential.” He instructed reporters that releasing audiotapes “would hurt our capacity sooner or later to efficiently pursue delicate investigations.”
Garland pushed back at Republican assaults on the judicial system and DOJ, calling them “unprecedented” and “unfounded” throughout a listening to earlier than the Home Judiciary Committee this month. The Justice Division, he mentioned, “is not going to again down from defending democracy.
This text was initially revealed on NBCNews.com
