President Biden has invoked executive privilege to block House Republicans from obtaining audio recordings of his interviews with special counsel Robert Hur over his handling of classified documents.
The move comes just hours before House Republicans are set to meet to consider resolutions to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress for failing to turn over the files which had been subpoenaed by the House Judiciary and Oversight committees.
“Because of the President’s longstanding commitment to protecting the integrity, effectiveness, and independence of the Department of Justice and its law enforcement investigations, he has decided to assert executive privilege over the recordings,” White House counsel Ed Siskel wrote in a letter obtained by The Hill.
Siskel also called into question the motives of Republicans seeking the recordings.
“The absence of a legitimate need for the audio recordings lays bare your likely goal—to chop them up, distort them, and use them for partisan political purposes,” Siskel wrote. “Demanding such sensitive and constitutionally-protected law enforcement materials from the Executive Branch because you want to manipulate them for potential political gain is inappropriate.”
The transcript of Biden’s interview with Hur, which took place over two days last October, was also released to House Republicans ahead of the special counsel’s public testimony on Capitol Hill in March.
The content makes clear the interview has little to do with the GOP’s purported interest in obtaining the audio files, which they argue could offer clues for their impeachment investigation.
While Hur’s report 345-page concluded no charges should be brought against the president, its descriptions of Biden’s memory lapses and the description of the president as a well-meaning, elderly man” set off a political firestorm.
Among other instances, Hur cited Biden’s 2017 conversations with ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer, which the special counsel described as “painfully slow, with Mr. Biden struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries.”
The White House had pushed back hard against Hur’s inclusion of those details, calling them gratuitous and highlighting Biden’s willingness to voluntarily sit for an interview. But Hur has stressed that he needed to explain in his report how he came to the conclusion not to recommend charges.
Siskel noted in his letter to House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and House Oversight and Accountability Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) that Biden did not assert privilege over any part of Hur’s lengthy report.
“The absence of a legitimate need for the audio recordings lays bare your likely goal—to chop them up, distort them, and use them for partisan political purposes,” Siskel wrote. “Demanding such sensitive and constitutionally-protected law enforcement materials from the Executive Branch because you want to manipulate them for potential political gain is inappropriate.”
This part says it all. Nice to see them being directly called out for their corruption.
Do I understand correctly that they have the full transcript already? For what reason would they need the actual audio, then?
Honestly i had the same question. Truthfully i dont quite understand this whole issue. Or if it even is one?
To chop up the audio into misleading sound bites for attack ads as far as I can tell
The absence of a legitimate need for the audio recordings lays bare your likely goal—to chop them up, distort them, and use them for partisan political purposes. Demanding such sensitive and constitutionally-protected law enforcement materials from the Executive Branch because you want to manipulate them for potential political gain is inappropriate.
- White House counsel Ed Siskel
I mean, we all know what the right-wing intends to do because it’s what they’ve been doing. Right-wing media can’t report the news honestly, because reality distorts their narratives. I remember during Trump’s first impeachment trial Fox would broadcast whatever Trump’s lawyers would say, then go picture-in-picture to their talking heads while Jamie Raskin and the other prosecutors were talking, ensuring their base didn’t actually get to hear the evidence. Or just look at James O’Keefe and his Project Veritas “reports” where it becomes painfully obvious that whoever he’s setting up has had their answers taken out of context.
Can’t they just quote things out of context to misleading readers?
Does their base read?
This is the way.
/s
I’ve already heard one regarding Biden’s immigration policy. The sound clip is so clearly only the first half of a sentence going by his tonality. Shit should be illegal
I can imagine so many sentences like
We don’t have a problem with XYZ, but we need to fix/address…
And just cutting it before the but
to chop them up, distort them, and use them for partisan political purposes,” Siskel wrote.
They need to feed the audio to an AI bot so it can generate a voice that says what they want it to say for their attack ads and other social media garbage.
You dont need this audio file for that, there’s enough audio or Biden today to already generate anything you want.
They could use this to cut things up and play actual audio though.
Hell, there’s been deepfakes for a couple years of Obama, Trump, and Biden, stuff like playing games and tier lists (some of them are hilarious)
On one hand, some really are hilarious, on the other it irks me that these start to normalize deep fakes.
I definitely agree, but they were going to happen eventually. I’d rather they be used initially for comedic purposes so people can get used to the concept than have malicious audio/video right out the gate
Republicans and their far-right news outlets are well known for this misleading and outright hostile to reality reporting; Good for Biden on at least stopping them from putting out cuts which would be used to manipulate the masses. They can still use transcripts, but often voices have a lot more power.
