The White House has blocked the release of audio from President Joe Biden’s interview with a special counsel about his handling of classified documents, arguing Thursday that Republicans in Congress only wanted the recordings “to chop them up” and use them for political purposes.
The dispute over access to the recordings is at the center of a Republican effort to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress and more broadly to hinder the Democratic president’s reelection effort in the final months of the closely contested campaign.
“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,” White House counsel Ed Siskel wrote in a scathing letter to House Republicans ahead of scheduled votes by two House committees to refer Garland to the Justice Department for the contempt charges over the department’s refusal to hand over the audio.
“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,” Siskel added.
Read more at APnews.com
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