Jim Jordan claims transcripts of Biden’s special counsel interview cannot be trusted after president blocks release of tape – live | Republicans

As House Republicans press forward with a resolution to hold the attorney general, Merrick Garland, in contempt for not releasing recordings of Joe Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur, the president moved to invoke executive privilege to keep the records out of the public eye. The justice department argued that the two GOP-led committees demanding the audio offered no good reason why they should be made public, and worried their release would chill future investigations. Jim Jordan, the Republican House judiciary committee chair, argued that the White House transcripts of Biden’s interview with Hur, who was investigating his possession of classified documents, cannot be trusted to be accurate. The judiciary committee’s hearing is ongoing, and the House oversight committee is also expected to consider the matter later this evening.

Here’s what else has happened today so far:

• The Republican push to access audio of Biden’s interview with Hur is likely an attempt to refocus voters’ attention on the president’s age, and the special counsel’s comments about his memory.

• Rightwing congressman Matt Gaetz traveled to Donald Trump’s business fraud trial in New York City, and echoed language the ex-president used to address the Proud Boys, a far-right group whose members were involved in the January 6 insurrection.

• The Dow Jones industrial average hit an all-time high, and Biden seized on it to argue Americans would benefit.

The Dow Jones industrial average, one of Wall Street’s benchmark indices, just climbed above 40,000 points for the first time ever, and Joe Biden wants you to know:

It is indeed a positive sign for people with money tied up in the stock market, and potentially for Biden, whose handling of the economy has received low marks in recent polls. That said, the stock market and the economy are two different things.

Here’s more on the Dow’s big day, and what it means:

Once again, a group of House Republicans is making a pilgrimage to the New York courthouse where Donald Trump’s business fraud trial is taking place in a show of support for their party’s presumptive presidential nominee.

Among the group is Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, who on X shared a photo of himself outside the courtroom while echoing Trump’s instruction to the Proud Boys militia group in 2020 to “stand back and stand by”:

The Proud Boys were among the far-right groups that participated in the January 6 insurrection, and several of their members are now in jail for the attack:

At the start of the House judiciary committee’s markup of a resolution to hold the attorney general, Merrick Garland, in contempt, the Republican chair, Jim Jordan, argued that releasing the recordings of Joe Biden’s interview with Robert Hur was necessary because the previously released transcripts cannot be trusted.

“The recordings are necessary. The transcripts alone are not sufficient evidence of the state of the president’s memory … because the White House has a track record of altering the transcript,” Jordan said.

He cited an April incident, widely reported by the conservative press, in which Biden read the instruction “pause” off of his teleprompter at a speech in Washington DC. A transcript released later by the White House did not include the blunder, which Jordan argued was a sign that the interview transcripts might not be accurate:

The video and the audio recording is the best evidence of the words that President Biden actually spoke. The department’s refusal to produce the audio recordings of the special counsel for his interviews with President Biden amounts to a demand that the committee trust that the department created and produced interview transcripts that are actually accurate and complete – transcripts that the White House and President Biden’s personal counsel likely had access to before they were finalized.

In a letter to House Republicans obtained by the Guardian, a top justice department official said lawmakers had provided no clear reason why they were demanding recordings of Joe Biden and his ghostwriter’s interviews with special counsel Robert Hur, and refused to turn them over.

“Despite our many requests, the Committees have not articulated a legitimate congressional need to obtain audio recordings from Mr Hur’s investigation, let alone one that outweighs the Department’s strong interest in protecting the confidentiality of law enforcement files,” assistant attorney general Carlos Felipe Uriarte wrote in a letter to oversight committee chair James Comer and judiciary committee chair Jim Jordan.

“The Department will continue to cooperate reasonably and appropriately, but we will not risk the long-term integrity of our law enforcement work.”

The 11-page letter lists a number of reasons why the department would not hand over the recording, including concerns that doing so would chill cooperation with future investigations, and that the lawmakers may use the recordings for “political purposes”.

Uriarte closed by telling the GOP that the department had provided more than enough information:

If the Committees’ goal is to receive information from the Department in furtherance of your investigations, that goal has been more than met. Our cooperation has been extraordinary. The Committees have not responded in kind. It seems that the more information you receive, the less satisfied you are, and the less justification you have for contempt, the more you rush towards it.

The White House has asserted executive privilege over interview recordings with Joe Biden and his ghostwriter that were demanded by House Republicans, while accusing the lawmakers of planning to use them “for partisan political purposes”.

In a letter to the Republican chairs of the judiciary and oversight committees, a lawyer for the president, Edward N Siskel, says the administration has already provided transcripts of the interviews, copies of letters between the parties and classified documents, but is holding back the recordings of the interviews themselves out of concern that their release could harm future investigations.

“As you know, the Attorney General has warned that the disclosure of materials like these audio recordings risks harming future law enforcement investigations by making it less likely that witnesses in high-profile investigations will voluntarily cooperate,” Siskel wrote.

He went on to accuse the GOP of seeking the recordings merely so they could use them to attack Biden:

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.

Good morning, US politics blog readers. Earlier this year, justice department special counsel Robert Hur released his report into Joe Biden’s possession of classified documents, which did not recommend charging the president, but nonetheless caused a firestorm over comments Hur included about the president’s age and memory. The news has since moved on, but Republicans in the House of Representatives are not finished with the investigation. Shortly after its release, two GOP-led committees sent subpoenas to the attorney general, Merrick Garland, demanding the video and audio recordings of Hur’s interviews with Biden, and a ghostwriter who collaborated on his memoir. Garland did not hand over what they wanted, so, today, two House committees led by Biden antagonists will begin the process of holding the attorney general in contempt.

First up is the judiciary committee, which will start its markup of the resolution at 10am ET, followed by the oversight committee, which convenes at 8pm – reportedly so lawmakers can attend Donald Trump’s business fraud trial in New York City.

Here’s what else is going on:

• House Republicans will consider messaging bills intended to force Democrats into tricky votes, including legislation meant to stop the Biden administration from cutting off the flow of weapons to Israel. Votes are expected at 4pm.

• Biden holds a White House meeting at 11.30am with the plaintiffs in Brown v Board of Education, the landmark supreme court decision that paved the way for school desegregation.

• Speaker Mike Johnson and North Carolina officials will unveil a statue of influential evangelist Billy Graham in the US Capitol at 11am.