Biden Asserts Executive Privilege Over Recordings With Special Counsel in Documents Case
We have the transcripts. Why not release the recordings?
President Joe Biden asserted executive privilege over the audio and video recordings during his interviews with Special Counsel Robert Hur.
The privilege includes interviews between Biden and ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer.
House Republicans threatened to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress if he doesn’t hand over the recordings.
Associate Attorney General Carlos Uriarte alerted Reps. Jim Jordan and James Comer, chairmen of the Committee on the Judiciary and Committee on Oversight and Accountability: “I write to inform you that the President has asserted executive privilege over the requested audio recordings and is making a protective assertion of privilege over any remaining materials responsive to the subpoenas that have not already been produced.”
Hur investigated Biden’s handling of classified documents when he departed as vice president in 2012.
Hur interviewed Biden for five hours in 2023. He didn’t recommend filing charges against Biden, but described him as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
The comments set off a wave of criticism and concern.
House Republicans subpoenaed the recordings in April. The department said it would not hand them over.
CNN (yes, CNN!), Judicial Watch, and the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project filed FOIA requests for the recordings.
“It is the longstanding position of the executive branch held by administrations of both parties that an official who asserts the President’s claim of executive privilege cannot be prosecuted for criminal contempt of Congress,” added Uriate.
Garland told Biden executive privilege applied to all recordings, including those with Zwonitzer: “The audio recordings of your interview and Mr. Zwonitzer’s interview fall within the scope of executive privilege. Production of these recordings to the Committees would raise an unacceptable risk of undermining the Department’s ability to conduct similar high-profile criminal investigations–in particular, investigations where the voluntary cooperation of White House officials is exceedingly important.”
Hur and his team released transcripts of the interviews. Why keep the recordings secret, especially since Biden claimed Hur “mischaracterized the interviews.”
White House Counsel Ed Siskel told House Republicans: “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. 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.”
Would Siskel tell CNN the same thing?
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Comments
There’s nothing like transparency, and this is most definitely nothing like transparency. Thankfully, the pedophile in Chief has set the precedent that one president can revoke privilege from the previous one.
You’re assuming Biden lives long enough for anyone to worry.
The puppet masters will do their best to keep their puppet barely alive. I bet they are working on an AI version of Crooked Joe Biden.
I think the tapes are useful whether or not the pedophile lives long enough for the tapes to affect him personally.
is anyone watching where Hillary is … Arkincide ya know ….
That’s no precedent, it’s always been the case. The privilege always belongs to the current president, not to anyone else.
The transcripts were likely altered. Biden will end up pardoning himself.
I think it’s all the descriptive material they don’t want verified. “He looked down and mumbled” and things like that.
as well as Hunter and his Brother …
Not only that, the audio recordings will show how out of touch Biden is and blow a hole in the Dems claims that Hur was out of bounds declining to prosecute because of Biden’s dotage. Hur was exactly right and the tapes prove it.
Hur didn’t say Biden is incompetent, he said Biden played the incompetent at his interview, and would undoubtedly have done the same to a jury.
to chop them up, distort them, and use them for partisan political purposes
The thing is, that applies to EVERYTHING. By that standard there shouldn’t even be a press secretary giving briefings at the White House – because Republicans will just pounce and seize and “chop them up and distort them.”
Thing is, the transcripts are out there, and the only response the Dems have to any of that material – without releasing the unedited tapes – is to say, “Don’t talk about that!”
Sundowner screams for Presidential privileges but wants to take Trump’s away.
Following the age-old law: Democrats are always in the right, Republicans are always in the wrong.
Trump has no privilege. It belongs to the current president, whoever that may be.
Doesn’t a claim of privilege need some specific need of the president to hang on? Like the need for advisers to feel safe in giving their best advice?
What is this claim supposed to be protecting?
These are rhetorical questions, of course. This is a spurious claim just intended to continue the (unsuccessful) coverup of Biden’s dementia until the election.
Yes. The ‘need’ is that it’s desirable for a well-functioning Republic that the Executive has the ability to receive candid advice and guidance from his Administration counselors and even those outside of government without fear of that advice becoming a political weapon that can be used against him…or the people advising him.
The problem of asserting Executive Privilege in this instance is that it’s protecting Biden from the lawful oversight of Congress by exploring the potentially criminal and IMPEACHABLE offenses committed by Biden before he even became president. I guess anything is possible. But, it’s seems HUGELY unlikely Privilege would be sustained by the Court here.
They know that. They just want it to take time. Think of it as reverse lawfare.
To be honest, it is not unlikely that if the Court does not sustain the claim of privilege, that the regime will just ignore the court ruling. The Court has no enforcement mechanism of its own, And the GOPe is terrified of having to oppose them.
Subotai Bahadur
The court certainly has an enforcement mechanism: a court order, to disobey which is contempt. And this regime has never yet disobeyed a court order or decision.
“Doesn’t a claim of privilege need some specific need of the president to hang on? Like the need for advisers to feel safe in giving their best advice?”
Interesting admission.
So, the “investigators” were working for Brandon during the interview(s), giving free and candid advice, one presumes on how to answer so as to stay in office.
The tape must be absolutely horrible if they’re playing this card. They’re wagering that if Congress challenges this in court, it will take a year or more to settle…and that’s probably a safe bet.
Exactly. The transcript of the interview has already been released. Everybody knows EXACTLY what he said. What the world would like to know is HOW is said it. What was his mental state? What was his lucidity? Are his cognitive abilities failing. Voter have an absolute right to know this. There is no executive privilege for that.
Which would easily answer the question if some nefarious political organization chopped or edited them. Unless of course, it’s the transcripts that have been edited.
No, we don’t. We know what the transcript says, which may or may not be what was actually said.
Yep, the fact that they’re fighting so hard to NOT release the tape calls into significant question whether the transcript is accurate.
Wasn’t this already decided in Nixon?
Sorry. I made the same comment and didn’t see yours.
Too bad for Biden that the next president can invalidate any claims of Executive Privilege when it comes to Biden’s misdeeds.
That’s the way it always used to work. But, I’ve seen enough of the DC District and Circuit Court judges to now understand that there is a ‘Trump Exception Doctrine.’ Before Trump became president, ANY prior Executive Order (or subordinate order, from a Cabinet Secretary for instance) could be undone with a subsequent Executive Order. Then, Trump wrote an Executive Order to undo a prior order by Obama’s Cabinet called DACA. That Executive Order was challenged in Court and that challenged was unbelievably sustained, setting 240+ years of precedent on its head.
This is not an a case of Exexutive Order but Executive Privilege, in which a federal appeals panel blocked Trump from invoking in the investigation of the January 6 commission and granted President Joe Biden the final say in the matter.
https://www.newsweek.com/court-appeals-block-trumps-executive-privilege-claim-rule-biden-gets-final-say-1655792
Biden’s chance coming.
That is still true
That did not happen. Neither 0bama nor Trump ever made any such orders. The DACA program was started by a memorandum by the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the decision to end it was made in a memorandum by the Acting Secretary of Homeland Security. The only reason she gave was that she had received legal advice that DACA was illegal, so she had no choice but to end it.
This was not an executive order, it was an agency action, and as such was subject to the Administrative Procedures Act, which requires agencies to engage in “reasoned decisionmaking”, and directs that agency actions be “set aside” if they are “arbitrary” or “capricious”.
As the Supreme Court wrote: “The dispute before the Court is not whether DHS may rescind DACA. All parties agree that it may. The dispute is instead primarily about the procedure the agency fol-
lowed in doing so.” And the procedure was deficient because the only reason given was that it had no legal choice but to end it, but in fact (said the court) it did have other choices, which it didn’t consider.
Justice Thomas pinpointed a big flaw in this decision: The original DACA memorandum suffered the same flaw. It didn’t go through the APA rulemaking procedure either, so DHS should have been entitled to end it on that basis. The program was established arbitrarily, and therefore should have been be allowed to end equally arbitrarily.
“Under the auspices of today’s decision, administrations can bind their successors by unlawfully adopting significant legal changes through Executive Branch agency memoranda. Even if the agency lacked authority to effectuate the changes, the changes cannot be undone by the same agency in a successor administration unless the successor provides sufficient policy justifications to the satisfaction of this Court. In other words, the majority erroneously holds that the agency is not only permitted, but required, to continue administering unlawful programs that it inherited from a previous administration.”
But none of this has anything to do with executive orders.
Since the content is already public, it would seem a safe guess that the way the content is spoken would be the Democrat’s concern. Noting Hurr’s comments I would speculate that listening to the recording would amplify the impression of Biden as a senile old man.
“Biden asserts executive privilege”. I doubt Biden even knows what executive privilege is at this point.
We must assume therefore that the Pedophile-in-Chief admitted that he showered with his daughter in the interview. It’s the only logical explanation.
Hmmmm…
“Nixon refused to release his recordings, and Jaworski appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to force Nixon to turn over the tapes.
On July 24, 1974, the Supreme Court ordered Nixon to release the tapes.”
Biden’s taped interview was used to deny prosecution for a crime.
How is this different than Nixon?
Ohhhhhhhh! Silly me. Nixon was a Republican.
The cases are significantly different, because in that case it was a prosecutor within the executive branch (and therefore under Nixon’s authority) who demanded the tapes, and his interest in them was that he needed them in order to prosecute seven criminal cases that had already been brought. So there were no separation of power issues, and the prosecutor’s need to prosecute his cases overrode the president’s general need for confidentiality. Here it’s Congress seeking the recordings, and Biden can claim it has not asserted an interest sufficient to override the DOJ’s need to be able to secure executive branch cooperation in investigations such as this. Basically he’s saying that if the recordings are released, no future president will ever agree to such an interview again.
Greta Van Susteren has a nice tweet on just why this assertion of executive privilege is unlawful because it doesn’t apply to any of the 4 categories laid out in the 2001 executive order that Presidents have been following. Apparently, Biden is creating a 5th category of “Documents that supposed ‘independent’ agents of the DOJ created during an investigation of the President’s misdeeds.”
https://twitter.com/greta/status/1791090512797016346
United States V Nixon, 1974
https://www.oyez.org/cases/1973/73-1766
Question
Is the President’s right to safeguard certain information, using his “executive privilege” confidentiality power, entirely immune from judicial review?
Conclusion (8-0):
No. The Court held that neither the doctrine of separation of powers, nor the generalized need for confidentiality of high-level communications, without more, can sustain an absolute, unqualified, presidential privilege. The Court granted that there was a limited executive privilege in areas of military or diplomatic affairs, but gave preference to “the fundamental demands of due process of law in the fair administration of justice.” Therefore, the president must obey the subpoena and produce the tapes and documents. Nixon resigned shortly after the release of the tapes.
I can’t recall ever agreeing with something FJB said or did. But on this one, I think it is the correct decision:
1.Because there’s really nothing new there, except corroboration of Hur’s report, and
2.Good precedent when Dems want yet another Trump personal document, which they surely will.
Bruh, the Biden WH has consistently denied to uphold privilege claims from the Trump Admin. That’s important b/c the CURRENT POTUS makes the call about prior Admin privilege claims.
What’s ‘new’ within the audio is the manner and cadence of the question/answers. The length of any pauses before answering would be clarified. Audio also provides important context about the tenor of the Q&A exchange. Did Biden become angry, seem to misunderstand, become unreasonably/inexplicably confused and so on.
Finally Exec Privilege has been long understood to apply between a POTUS and his principle advisors. This is common sense b/c we want a POTUS to able to give/receive candid criticism/exchange to reach the best possible solution as they lead the Nation. Piercing that would undermine the level of honest discussion.
This claim of Exec Privilege however is well beyond this. Instead the Biden WH is attempting to use Exec Privilege not to cloak conversation of the POTUS and his advisors but between the President and the Special Counsel investigating him to prevent the release of audio recordings of his interview for which a transcript has been made public.
There’s really only two reasons for this. Either Biden comes across as devious, argumentative and confused or the ‘transcript’ doesn’t capture what occurred in the interview honestly. Perhaps both. If it was neither the Biden WH wouldn’t oppose release of the audio.
I don’t disagree with your assessment. However, the day after the election the Dems are going to start in with their ridiculous probes, requesting everything down to Trump’s BM frequency 14 years ago.
This way he can go right to “no, you can’t have it, just like you protected your nitwit Biden.
Ridiculous.
They already released the transcript.
If they had claimed executive privilege over the transcript, you MIGHT have an argument.
But they didn’t. If, as you claim, there’s nothing new, then the claim of privilege is automatically false, because you can’t have privilege over something already released.
For the same reason the FBI destroys original recordings of witness and suspect interviews before submitting transcripts of those recordings to a court, a practice which, I suspect, would get me a felony charge of evidence tampering were I to engage in it: to prevent comparison of the recording with the transcript.
I thought the FBI deliberately never records these in the first place, so how can it destroy the recordings? The “transcripts”, as far as I know, are reconstructions by the agents, made a short or long time after the interview, and there is no way to verify them.
The cynicism is off the meter. What have these investigations by Republicans over the years ever amount to?
Nothing.
The real reason Biden is claiming privilege is to deny the Republicans their fundraising bluster, not because he is afraid.
executive privilege >>>another huge mistake by the scotus to allow it
same as having had allowed slavery to be/stay legal
and they didnt even have to “legislate” their decisions
it was clearly against the idea of america
“We have the transcripts. Why not release the recordings?”
We can just take for granted that the transcripts are 100% accurate renditions of what was actually said. Like the WH Press Office’s transcripts of Brandon speeches where we already HEARD the gaffes with our own ears, but somehow they never appear on the transcripts.
So, what is the elderly, forgetful, and sympathetic president hiding?
Is it that he shared state secrets with a ghostwriter that isn’t cleared?
That he’s not forgetful and sympathetic and should be indicted and tried?
Perhaps the American people might find out he’s mentally incompetent to remain as president.
Or all of the above?
one thing fjb never forgets is
10% for the big guy
The tapes will show how much the transcript was edited to make the President look good or it will show that the transcript was a true and faithful record.
I wonder what the odds are in Las Vegas?
So basically Trump could have asserted executive privilege over the Mueller report and all of its taped interviews and Schiff would have just said “ah well, that’s his right”
No, Schiff would have fought it, just as Jordan and Comer will fight this one.
Didn’t Biden waive executive privilege when he consented to the interview?
Wasn’t the investigation conducted by Hur about Biden’s actions as a senator and as VP? Biden could be anyone under investigation and would have no privilege to claim over the tapes. Why should he have privilege to claim now, when his current status as POTUS isn’t relative to the nature and cause of the investigation?