President Joe Biden has invoked executive privilege to stop a Congressional investigation from obtaining audio recordings of his interviews with special counsel Robert Hur regarding his illegal handling of classified documents.
The decision comes despite Biden’s insistence that Hur mischaracterized the interviews in his 345-page report released in February.
Hur’s described Biden as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” in the bombshell report that sent the White House reeling.
The controversy over the 81-year-old president’s mental well-being and memory has loomed large over the 2024 election, with critics claiming Biden has shown numerous signs of dementia since taking office.
Hur also described Biden’s memory as “hazy,” “fuzzy,” “faulty,” “poor” and having “significant limitations.”
The White House’s move to block these audio recordings from reaching the public has placed Biden in another politically uncomfortable situation. He claims that Hur’s concerns over his mental well-being is inaccurate, while simultaneously using his legal powers to keep the raw audio secret.
In a letter to Republican House leaders on Thursday morning, White House Counsel Ed Siskel revealed Biden’s decision and accused the committees of seeking the audio recordings for political purposes.
“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 wrote.
Attorney General Merrick Garland’s office had asked the White House to block the release of the Biden audio recordings.
Biden’s meetings with Hur, which took place over five hours last October, involved detailed questions about his practices surrounding classified documents and his recollection of their storage locations. Biden kept boxes of classified documents in unsecure locations after leaving office, including in a cardboard box in his Delaware garage.
On February 8, the Justice Department released a report announcing that Hur had decided not to pursue any charges in the case.
Biden’s decision to assert executive privilege to keep the audio recordings secret also effectively shields Garland from being held in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with subpoenas from the House Judiciary Committee and the House Oversight and Accountability Committee.
The president’s handling of executive privilege is a sharp contrast to his approach to investigations involving the former Trump administration.
Biden has routinely waived executive privilege to allow congressional and Justice Department investigators access to documents and witnesses from Donald Trump’s administration, claiming that invoking this same privilege on Trump’s behalf was unwarranted.
This included decisions against blocking former high-level Trump White House advisers from testifying to a grand jury convened by special counsel Jack Smith and against asserting privilege to shield Trump White House documents from the Democrat-led Jan. 6 select committee.
Many of those documents and witness interviews became central to the criminal charges that Trump has faced in Washington, D.C., and Florida.