US President Joe Biden has asserted executive privilege over audio recordings of his interview with special counsel Robert Hur, the Republican federal prosecutor who declined to recommend charges against the president over his handling of classified documents, NBC News reported on Thursday.
Hur wrote in his report that one reason not to bring a case against Biden is that the president would be sympathetic to a jury and could portray himself as an “elderly man with a poor memory.”
Biden later fired back at Hur’s report, insisting that his “memory is fine,” though he moments later mistakenly referred to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi as the “President of Mexico”.
White House counsel Ed Siskel notified Reps. James Comer (R-KY) and Jim Jordan (R-OH) of the decision in a letter on Thursday, according to NBC News. It came after Attorney General Merrick Garland recommended that Biden assert executive privilege. The Department of Justice had already given House Republicans transcripts of the interviews.
“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," Justice Department official Carlos Felipe Uriarte wrote in a letter to Jordan, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, and Comer, chair of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee.
Garland wrote in a separate letter to Biden that the audio recordings of his interview "fall within the scope of executive privilege," and that giving the recordings to Congress "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 was appointed by Garland to investigate the classified documents which were found at Biden's home and office.
As part of the probe into the classified documents, Hur interviewed many of Biden’s closest aides and advisers, including from the upper levels of the White House and the cabinet. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was among those interviewed by Hur.