Justice Department won't prosecute Garland for contempt, says refusal to provide audio wasn't crime
Justice Department won't prosecute Garland for contempt, says refusal to provide audio wasn't crime
The Justice Department says Attorney General Merrick Garland will not be prosecuted for contempt of Congress after refusing to turn over audio of President Joe Biden’s interview in his classified documents case because his actions “did not constitute a crime.”
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Lmao
The DOJ investigated the head of the DOJ and determined he didn't a commit a crime....
This is literally:
We've investigated ourselves and determined we did everything perfectly
In a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Justice Department official cited the department’s longstanding policy not to prosecute for contempt of Congress officials who don’t comply with subpoenas because of a president’s claim of executive privilege.
What crime did he commit?
Edit: I know the whole situation. I was only asking what crime he committed in order to point out that no crime was committed. Thanks for the explanations, though. More people can be aware now.
This is my understanding of the situation so please don't fully take my word for it.
Garland refused to fully cooperate with a subpoena issued to him by rebublicans. (specifically he refused to hand over audio from an interview of Biden in his classified documents investigation) Garland refused to cooperate because Biden told him not to cooperate. Republicans in congress then voted to find him in contempt of congress and wanted the DOJ to prosecute him. The DOJ then came through saying he didn't do anything wrong because he just did what Biden told him to do. And being part of biden's administration it's only normal to do what the president asks.
If we want to go back even further iirc there was a special council investigation into Biden regarding a handful of documents found at biden's home from the Obama administration. Biden apologized saying he forgot that he had those docs. He handed those docs over to investigators and fully cooperated with them. That whole situation ended with special investigators finding that Biden didn't do anything malicious and just forgot to relinquish (I think it was literally 3) those docs when he left office in 2016. That should have been the end of it. Republicans then drudged things up and wanted his interview from that investigation. Presumably to make it look like Biden was guilty of the same crimes trump is guilty of.
Technically speaking though Biden is guilty of violating the presidential records act. The same act trump is/was being tried for in his classified documents case. The difference being that Trump willfully took boxes upon boxes of documents pertaining to our national security secrets to Mar-a-Lago when he left office and then refused to cooperate with the FBI when they called him out for it. This then forced the FBI to raid Mar-a-Lago to get the documents back. Biden on the other hand was just old and forgot about some work he took home. When he was called out about it he fully cooperated and gave the documents back.
Garland refused to cooperate because Biden told him not to cooperate.
It's a little more complicated than that. The DoJ released the full transcript of all the interviews between the Special Counsel and President Biden. What's at issue now is that Republicans also want the audio tapes of all those interviews.
The DoJ is pushing back, and saying that Congress has all the info they need already with the full transcript, and they dont need the audio. The only purpose for releasing the audio is to use sound bites in Republican campaign ads.
I actually wish Biden never claimed executive privilege on it, because there is nothing on that tape we don't know. It's all in the transcript. Claiming privilege makes it look like there's secrets in it.
i also wish that the DoJ would have trotted out the 'No Legitimate Legislative Purpose" line that Barr did when he defied his subpoena. Because that is technically correct now: there is nothing to learn that we don't already know from the transcript.
Thank you for providing that context. Good to know the situation is even dumber than I thought.
A trial and a verdict is needed to determine guilt so no Biden is not guilty of that as a fact.
I mean, I clearly didn't mean he had a guilty judgment against him and the word guilty doesn't necessarily always imply legally guilty. But fine. For semantic's sake, He's not "guilty", but he did in fact violate the presidential records act. It was just decided that he wouldn't be prosecuted because it was a just a small oversight. Which, to be clear, is a decision I agree with.
Contempt of Congress is a crime. That being said, this was already addressed:
In a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Justice Department official cited the department’s longstanding policy not to prosecute for contempt of Congress officials who don’t comply with subpoenas because of a president’s claim of executive privilege.
Garland is part of the current administration and the President has not waived executive privilege.
So, no crime was committed.
Contempt of Congress is determined by Congress, and that did happen. But the DoJ has a longstanding policy not to prosecute in situations like Garland's. And even if it did, the DoJ determined the source of the contempt charge wasn't valid, so neither was the charge itself.
Congress can’t override executive privilege arbitrarily (or even at all,)
It’s there to keep presidents from being meddled with by congress in exactly this manner, and charging executive officials who comply with executive privilege is contemptuous, and an attempt to weaponized the DOJ.
Executive privilege goes to the current sitting president, so Trump stopped hanging it the moment he was no longer president…
Right. Contempt of Congress charges are submitted to the DOJ to prosecute. And the DOJ has the policy to not prosecute those situations, as I posted previously.
Executive privilege doesn't just disappear, it would still apply to everything under previous presidents as well, but it's the current President that determines whether to remove it. Biden a while ago said it wouldn't apply to things Trump's administration is being investigated for.
Executive privilege exists specifically to prevent congress from using its subpoenas powers excessively and interfering with the business of the executive branch doing its job. The, uh, co-equal, executive branch.
for example by subpoenas for extremely sensitive testimony by a sitting president specifically so it can harvest damaging sound bites to use in their election campaign.
Such a use would unduly chill the ability of the DOJ to interview witnesses and subjects in an investigation and expect candid cooperation.
When a POTUS invokes executive privilege, it goes to the courts to decide. Not congress. It is difficult to believe there is a legitimate need for crafting legislation, however, since they already have transcripts of the testimony. They don’t need the audio recordings.
It's more that after your term is over, you still have protection against having to answer for official acts during your term when you were still president. They've gone after Trump for the classified documents because that was not part of his official acts, so Biden has nothing to proect.
Congress can vote that anyone is in contempt for anything that they feel like if they really want to. It doesn't mean it's real or going to go anywhere.
Prosecuting Jesus
Contempt of Congress, the same.thing Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon did. Except executive privilege from Biden is being used to shield him.