US declines to charge Merrick Garland for contempt of Congress

The US Department of Justice (DoJ) has declined to press charges against Attorney General Merrick Garland for contempt of Congress after the House of Representatives narrowly voted to punish him for his refusal to hand over audio tapes of President Joe Biden.

The Republican-controlled House voted 216-207 on Wednesday to recommend that the DoJ, the department that Mr Garland oversees, file criminal charges against America’s top law enforcement officer.

The move stems from Mr Garland’s refusal to turn over to Republican lawmakers interview tapes from a justice department probe of Mr Biden’s handling of classified documents.

In a letter sent to Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson on Friday, a top DoJ official said the department found that Mr Garland’s actions “do not constitute a crime”.

Carlos Felipe Uriarte, an assistant attorney general, said it was a longstanding policy of the department to not bring charges in cases where the president has made the decision to conceal the requested material using his power of executive privilege.

“Consistent with this longstanding position and uniform practice, the Department has determined that the responses by Attorney General Garland to the subpoenas issued by the Committees did not constitute a crime, and accordingly the Department will not bring the congressional contempt citation before a grand jury or take any other action to prosecute the Attorney General,” Mr Uriarte wrote.

Executive privilege is legal doctrine that grants presidents the right to withhold executive branch information from the other two branches of government.

Last month, Mr Biden invoked executive privilege to block congressional Republicans from accessing tapes of his interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur, who was investigating Mr Biden’s retention of classified documents after he served as vice-president.

Mr Biden turned in the documents once they had been discovered. The DoJ special counsel who interviewed Mr Biden said that although he had retained the files, Biden should not be charged.

The White House said that Republicans had no legitimate need to access the five hours of audio, since a transcript had already been released. They argued that Republicans wanted to use the audio for campaign attack ads against the incumbent Democrat as he seeks his second term as president.

The special counsel’s report said that Mr Hur believed prosecutors would struggle to secure a conviction against Mr Biden, as jurors likely would view him as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory”.

Mr Biden, 81, is the oldest US president and his age and lucidity is seen by Republicans to be a political weakness.

Former president and presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump is also accused of having retained documents that were meant to be handed over to government archivists after he left office.

Trump is charged in a separate case brought by a different special counsel. He allegedly attempted to obstruct justice by hiding the classified memos after he had been ordered to hand them over.

In a statement responding to the DoJ’s decision, Mr Johnson said he would continue to pursue the audio in federal court, and called the move “sadly predictable”.

Two other attorneys general have been held in contempt of Congress in recent years. In both cases Eric Holder and Bill Barr recieved similar letters from the DoJ stating that prosecutors were declining to press charges.