House urges court to expedite enforcing Hur audio subpoena
By
Ashley Oliver
July 12, 2024 3:21 pm
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The House Judiciary Committee asked a judge on Friday to accelerate forcing Attorney General Merrick Garland to hand over audio recordings of an interview between former special counsel Robert Hur and President Joe Biden.
House attorneys said in court papers that a preliminary injunction was necessary because the “clock on the 118th Congress” is “ticking,” and the audio recordings were needed for lawmakers to perform their oversight duties adequately and conclude their impeachment inquiry into the president.
The request comes as part of House Republicans’ fight with the Department of Justice to obtain tapes from the interview Hur conducted last fall with Biden during his inquiry into the president’s handling of classified material. Biden, 81, came off as a “well-meaning, elderly man” with a declining memory during the interview, Hur said. The special counsel declined to prosecute him for mishandling classified documents in part for that reason.
The DOJ provided a transcript of the interview, but Republicans argued that was insufficient and that the audio tapes of it were the “best evidence” for lawmakers.
“The transcripts do not capture either verbal context (tone, emphasis, inflection, volume, and pace) or nonverbal context (hesitating and pausing),” House attorneys wrote, adding that the transcripts also did not include “filler words.”
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https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/justice/3080087/house-urges-court-to-expedite-enforcing-hur-audio-subpoena/
