Mark the Date! Garland’s DOJ Actually Takes a Stand on Something?

Despite threats by Representatives James Comer and Jim Jordan to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress, the Department of Justice said Monday it will not turn over the audio of President Joe Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur regarding his storage of classified documents, bringing bad-faith Republican impeachment efforts (or whatever was left of them) to a screeching halt.

In a letter to Jordan and Comer obtained by The New Republic, Assistant Attorney General Carlos Uriarte effectively thwarted Republicans’ meritless effort to impeach Biden. “Neither branch [of Congress] has any constitutionally-based authority to seek conflict for conflict’s sake,” Uriarte wrote, identifying the politically motivated nature of the disastrous impeachment inquiry, which yielded more indictments of the GOP’s own star witnesses than actual evidence of the president’s wrongdoing.

“The Department is concerned that the Committees’ particular focus on continuing to demand information that is cumulative of information we already gave you—what the President and Mr. Hur’s team said in the interview—indicates that the Committees’ interests may not be in receiving information in service of legitimate oversight or investigatory functions, but to serve political purposes that should have no role in the treatment of law enforcement files,” continued Uriarte.

In a February 12 letter to Attorney General Garland, Comer and Jordan requested the audio of Biden’s interview with Hur, which made news when Hur, who did not recommend charges for the president, editorialized in his report, including “gratuitous” details about Biden’s poor memory and inability to recall details about his life. Critics have called the report a “partisan hit job.”

It’s become clear that, in demanding the audio, Comer and Jordan were scrambling at potential ammunition against Biden, who has faced questions about his age since his 2020 victory, to use in the lead-up to the 2024 election. Comer himself has already begun to back away from impeachment in the absence of evidence. Having all but admitted defeat, audio of Biden’s interview might have represented the last chance to squeeze some value out of a smear campaign that never even had enough Republican support to bring to a vote. For once, however, Garland’s Department of Justice did not cave.