House Republicans are plowing ahead with contempt proceedings against Attorney General Merrick Garland despite President Joe Biden’s move to shield him from prosecution.
Two House panels advanced resolutions to hold Garland in contempt of Congress Thursday for refusing to provide special counsel Robert Hur’s recorded interviews with the president.
Attorney General Merrick Garland appears at a House Appropriations Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on April 16, 2024. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Until Thursday, Garland had not asserted any legal privilege excusing his defiance of congressional subpoenas. But as House Republicans were poised to begin contempt proceedings, the president stepped in to assert executive privilege over the recordings.
The move effectively blocks the attorney general from being prosecuted pending a court battle.
“President Biden is apparently afraid for the citizens of this country and everyone to hear those tapes,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said at a press conference.
The tapes were recorded as part of Hur’s investigation of Biden’s handling of classified documents. The special counsel ultimately decided not to prosecute the president, partially because of his presentation as an “elderly man with a poor memory.”
Democrats say the transcripts of the interviews, which the committees have, should be enough for members of the House Judiciary and Oversight and Accountability committees. But the panels’ Republican chairmen say otherwise.
“Transcripts alone are not sufficient evidence of the state of the president’s memory, right? Because the White House has a track record of altering the transcripts,” said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.
The White House has been caught scrubbing the president’s gaffes from the transcripts of his speeches on multiple occasions. But Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) said there was no reason to believe the transcripts had been doctored, noting that it was produced by the special counsel’s office.
“Robert Hur was appointed by Donald Trump. He is a Republican appointee. The notion that somehow this transcript is fake is a wild insane conspiracy theory,” he said.
But if the transcripts are accurate, “Why do you care so much about us getting the audio? What’s the big deal?” Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.) countered.
Garland has said that releasing the tapes could deter future presidents from cooperating with similar investigations down the road. Sam Dewey, chief litigator for The Heritage Foundation Oversight Project, says that argument’s “a bit of a red herring.”
“If a special counsel asks the president for an interview and the president says no, he is going to be impeached with a great matter of speed and expedition. ... In today’s political climate, you can’t refuse to cooperate like that,” Dewey said.
Dewey is leading a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Justice Department for access to the recordings. If House Republicans wish to pursue charges against Garland, that’s a path they’ll need to explore, too.
—Samantha Flom
Former President Donald Trump speaks during the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit held at the Tampa Convention Center in Tampa, Fla., on July 23, 2022. Joe Raedle/Getty Images
TRUMP-ENDORSED CONSERVATIVES PREPARE TO ‘CHASE THE VOTE’
The young people at Turning Point Action’s Phoenix headquarters are running on rocket fuel: a fridge full of energy drinks and, according to them, tens of millions of dollars in fundraising to date.
“I’m proud of this operation,” 23-year-old Matthew Martinez told The Epoch Times as he showed off meticulously subdivided maps of Arizona and Wisconsin.
Martinez is leading the group’s “Chase the Vote” initiative, an effort to drive up turnout among Republicans this year, including through more positive messaging around early voting, absentee voting, and other alternatives to casting a ballot on Election Day.
The endeavor has even gotten an endorsement from the biggest name in today’s GOP.
“Turning Point is a great organization doing critical work to get out the vote and make our victory too big to rig. Sign up to work for them and help secure our victory!” former President Donald J. Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, linking to the “Careers” section of Turning Point Action’s website.
New jobs are a big part of the strategy. Turning Point Action wants to place hundreds of full-time ballot chasers on the ground in “super chase” areas—parts of Arizona, Wisconsin, or Michigan where they believe there are thousands of Republican votes on the table from men and women who didn’t participate in the 2016 or 2020 elections.
Their goal isn’t high-pressure political salesmanship. The name of the game is slow and steady “relational organizing.”
“They’re knocking on their neighbor’s doors, and they’re saying, ‘Hey, I live just down the road, would love to meet you. I’m having a cookout this week, and you should come over,’” Mr. Martinez said of the ballot chasers.
Turning Point Action is up against a juggernaut of nonprofits, unions, and other organizations on the Democratic and progressive side. Even as opinion polls and some other metrics trend in President Trump’s favor, few deny the structural advantage of the Democratic Party and its allies over their Republican and conservative foes.
Even this latest effort is downstream of past work by the other side.
“We were handed the playbook,” Turning Point Action Chief Operating Officer Tyler Bowyer told The Epoch Times. He said it came from “defectors from the Left,” declining to provide names.
“We need ten groups, a hundred groups doing similar things,” Andrew Kolvet, a Turning Point Action spokesman, told The Epoch Times.
For now, there’s Charlie Kirk’s organization along with a few other players—for example, activist Scott Presler’s Early Vote Action.
“It’s embarrassing to think how long it’s taken Republicans to start thinking about waging a real campaign,” James Gimpel, a professor at the University of Maryland who has researched early voting, told The Epoch Times.
“We’re doing something different—putting bodies on the ground,” Bowyer said.
—Nathan Worcester
The U.S. Supreme Court in Washington on May 15, 2024. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times
SCOTUS BACKS FINANCIAL REGULATOR
The Supreme Court ruled on May 16 that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) controversial funding mechanism was constitutional under the Appropriations Clause of Article I.
The case is one of three major regulatory decisions the court is expected to issue this term with potentially far-reaching consequences for the administrative state. The court has yet to release its opinion on the decades-old Chevron doctrine and the constitutionality of administrative law courts.
Seven of the justices supported this interpretation with Justice Clarence Thomas writing the majority opinion. Two justices – Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch – offered a dissenting opinion warning that the majority failed to place adequate limits on Congress’ ability to appropriate funds.
Two associations of payday lenders – the Community Financial Services Association of America and Consumer Service Alliance of Texas – challenged the CFPB’s funding structure, stating that Congress overstepped its authority under the Appropriations Clause.
Congress created CFPB through the Dodd-Frank Act passed in response to the 2009 financial crisis. Prior to the Supreme Court’s decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit had ruled that the agency had an unconstitutional funding mechanism.
CFPB’s funding mechanism is unique in that it allows the agency’s director to draw an amount from the Federal Reserve that he determines to be reasonably necessary for carrying out the agency’s mission. A caveat is that the funding requested can’t exceed a certain percentage of the Fed’s operating expenditures.
The Appropriations Clause reads, in part: “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” Much of the debate during oral argument surrounded what an appropriation was and how the founders would view the clause.
Justice Thomas wrote in his majority opinion that an appropriation “is simply a law that authorizes expenditures from a specified source of public money for designated purposes.” His opinion, Justice Alito’s dissent, and Justice Elena Kagan’s concurrence clashed over whether the CFPB’s funding mechanism aligned with the nation’s history.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, whose brainchild was CFPB, reacted to the news by posting on X that “[t]his is a big win for working people.” Other lawmakers similarly celebrated the decision while the New Civil Liberties Alliance, which filed an amicus brief against CFPB, accused the court of failing “to observe the protections to liberty conferred by Article I of the Constitution.”
Justice Alito’s dissent, which was joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, argued that the majority’s “decision turns the Appropriations Clause into a minor vestige” while allowing the CFPB to “bankroll its own agenda without any congressional control or oversight.”
–Sam Dorman
BOOKMARKS
A group of business executives urged N.Y. Mayor Eric Adams to send police to deal with pro-Palestinian protestors at Columbia University during a Zoom meeting on April 26. Although police did take action against the protestors a few days later, a spokesman for the mayor’s office denied any relation to the Zoom meeting.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have fled the Rafah region in the ten days since Israel has invaded it. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists the maneuvers in Rafah are key to defeating Hamas.
Trump has revealed he will probably announce his vice presidential pick during the upcoming Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The convention is scheduled for July 15-18.
Trump N.Y. trial is finishing its fifth week, the prosecution having called its last witness. The trial is nearing its completion, and parties may give final statements as early as Tuesday.
Sen. Joni Erst (R-Iowa) and Roger Williams (R-Texas) have alleged that the Small Business Administration is not complying with document requests in an ongoing electioneering investigation. The SBA’s administrator, Isabella Casilla Guzman, is accused of personally traveling the country to secure election wins for Democrats.
