{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://hageman.house.gov/media/press-releases/rep-hageman-votes-hold-garland-contempt-congress", "Rep. Hageman Votes to Hold Garland in Contempt of Congress", "2024-06-12", "2024", "2024-06", "Republican", "House", "WY", "Harriet M. Hageman", "H001096", "hageman.house.gov", "hageman", "https://hageman.house.gov/media/press-releases", "scraper", "Washington, DC \u2013 Today, Congresswoman Harriet Hageman voted in favor of H. Res. 1292 - Report to accompany the Resolution Recommending that the House of Representatives Find United States Attorney General Merrick B. Garland in Contempt of Congress for Refusal to Comply with a Subpoena Duly Issued by the Committee on the Judiciary. This resolution upholds the House's institutional power by recommending that the House find Attorney General Garland in contempt of Congress for failing to comply with the Committee\u2019s subpoenas.\n\nRepresentative Hageman stated, \u201cThere are no grounds for withholding audio or video recordings from President Biden\u2019s interview with Special Council Hur considering that the Department of Justice provided the transcript months ago. The moment that the transcript was released, the right to exert Executive Privilege was waived.\n\n\u201cThe tapes are important for several reasons. First, transcripts have been altered by this White House for previous speeches and events, so having the transcript verified as accurate by the recordings would be useful. Second, while transcripts can show us what was said, they do not reveal how something was said. The Department of Justice has already acknowledged that the transcript and the recordings are not identical \u2013 we must be allowed to know to what extent they are different.\n\n\u201cAttorney General Garland must comply with the Congressionally issued subpoena or face the consequences for not doing so.\u201d\n\nBackground:\n\nIn the weeks following the February 5, 2024, release of Special Counsel Robert K. Hur\u2019s report, the three House Committees conducting an impeachment inquiry to determine whether to draft articles of impeachment against President Biden engaged with the Department of Justice to obtain a limited set of documents and records related to the report.\n\nAfter the Department declined to provide the Committees with the relevant documents and records, the Committee on the Judiciary (\u2018\u2018Judiciary Committee\u2019\u2019) and the Committee on Oversight and Accountability (\u2018\u2018Oversight Committee\u2019\u2019) issued identical subpoenas on February 27, 2024, to Attorney General Merrick B. Garland compelling production of four specific categories of documents and records, including audio and video recordings of Special Counsel Hur\u2019s interviews with President Biden and his ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer.\n\nTo date, the Department has refused to produce the audio recordings. During Special Counsel Hur\u2019s investigation, his team uncovered evidence that President Biden \u2018\u2018willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.\u2019\u2019\n\nSpecial Counsel Hur found that then-Vice President Biden had \u2018\u2018strong motivations\u2019\u2019 to flout the rules for properly handling classified materials. meetings and events that would be of interest to prospective readers and buyers of his book.\u2019\u2019\n\nDespite this evidence, Special Counsel Hur ultimately concluded that no criminal charges were warranted.\n\nPresident Biden has vehemently denied the findings in Special Counsel Hur\u2019s report and he and his legal team have attempted to frame Special Counsel Hur\u2019s mention of President Biden\u2019s poor memory as \u2018\u2018gratuitous.\u2019\u2019 Yet during his testimony before the Committee, Special Counsel Hur stated that, \u2018\u2018[t]he evidence and the President himself put his memory squarely at issue.\u2019\u2019\n\nIn his report, Special Counsel Hur noted that, during both his and Zwonitzer\u2019s interviews with President Biden, the president\u2019s \u2018\u2018memory was significantly limited,\u2019\u2019 and he \u2018\u2018struggle[ed] to remember events and strain[ed] at times to read and relay his own [handwriting].\u2019\u2019\n\nSpecial Counsel Hur also observed that President Biden \u2018\u2018did not remember when he was vice president,\u2019\u2019 \u2018\u2018for[got] when his [vice presidential] term ended,\u2019\u2019 and \u2018\u2018did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died.\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-07T21:11:47Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://hageman.house.gov/media/press-releases/rep-hageman-votes-hold-garland-contempt-congress"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.4631799422204494, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}