Three House committees have asked the DOJ to turn over transcripts and recordings of President Joe Biden's interviews with special counsel Robert Hur, following an explosive report that concluded Biden is too cognitively impaired to be charged with a crime.
The request, sent by the three GOP leaders to Attorney General Merrick Garland, echoes many Republican concerns that Biden is receiving more favorable treatment than Donald Trump for the same crime.
"The Committee on the Judiciary requires these documents for its ongoing oversight of the Department’s commitment to impartial justice and its handling of the investigation and prosecution of President Biden’s presumptive opponent, Donald J. Trump, in the November 2024 presidential election," wrote the chairs of the three committees - House Oversight and Accountability Chair James Comer (R-KY), House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH), and House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-MO), who are demanding the information no later than February 19.
"Although Mr. Hur reasoned that President Biden’s presentation ‘as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory’ who “did not remember when he was vice president’ or ‘when his son Beau died’ posed challenges to proving the President’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, the report concluded that the Department’s principles of prosecution weighed against prosecution because the Department has not prosecuted ‘a former president or vice president for mishandling classified documents from his own administration," the letter continues.
"The one ‘exception’ to the Department’s principles of prosecution, as Mr. Hur noted, ‘is former President Trump.’ This speaks volumes about the Department’s commitment to evenhanded justice."
Other GOP lawmakers have said more of the same.
"Among the most disturbing parts of this report is the Special Counsel’s justification for not recommending charges: namely that the President’s memory had such ‘significant limitations’ that he could not convince a jury that the President held a ‘mental state of willfulness’ that a serious felony requires," said House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) and conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-NY) in a letter sent last week in response to the report.
"A man too incapable of being held accountable for mishandling classified information is certainly unfit for the Oval Office."