By Sarah N. Lynch and Makini Brice
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Justice Department on Monday rebuffed demands by Republicans within the Dwelling of Representatives at give up audio recordings of President Joe Biden’s interviews with a special counsel whose sage questioning Biden’s memory place off a political firestorm.
Particular Counsel Robert Hur angered Dwelling Republicans by deciding no longer to pursue felony charges towards Democrat Biden for keeping classified records dating again to his time serving as vp below Barack Obama. The division had charged Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump for defending classified paperwork after he left the White Dwelling.
Assistant Attorney Traditional Carlos Uriarte said the division had already provided all of the knowledge sought in a congressional subpoena, alongside side sure transcribed interviews from Hur’s investigation.
“The Committees like spoke back with escalation and threats of felony contempt,” he wrote in a letter to Dwelling of Representatives Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan and Dwelling Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer. “We sprint the Committees to steer obvious of struggle reasonably than search it.”
Comer said the Republican-led panels within the Dwelling will proceed efforts to build up the knowledge they search, alongside side they’ll answer to the Justice Department at the moment.
“The American folks demand transparency from their leaders, no longer obstruction,” Comer said in a commentary.
Dwelling Republicans like threatened to retain Attorney Traditional Merrick Garland in contempt if the division would now not give up all of the records they’re searching out for.
Hur offered in February that he used to be declining to charge Biden for knowingly taking classified paperwork after leaving the vice presidency in 2017, sparking a political firestorm by noting in a sage that the president had cooperated with the probe and that his “awful memory” as an aged man would originate him complex to convict.
Within the division’s letter, Uriarte argued that lawmakers like already got “an phenomenal amount of data” linked to the Hur probe.
This no longer perfect integrated Hur’s sage and his testimony, but copies of sure classified records, transcripts of the interviews with Biden and a duplicate of the transcript of Hur’s interview with Biden’s memoir ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer, he said.
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