The U.S. House approved a measure finding Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt last month for not releasing tapes of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s interview with the president.
But now, U.S. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Pinellas) wants to take it a step further.
In a post to Luna’s X on Friday, she and other GOP lawmakers were pushing to invoke something called inherent contempt, which would force Garland to testify.
While Garland did provide written transcripts, lawmakers are requesting to see the videos, or oral recordings.
University of South Florida assistant professor of instruction Rob Mellen, Jr. spoke to WMNF’s Meghan Bowman about what it all means.
Mellen, Jr.: “It sort of means that the Congress has already found the individual in contempt of Congress, and they’ve made a referral to the Justice Department for prosecution of the individual. This already happened back in I think it was in May with Attorney General Merrick Garland. And as a result, the Justice Department, after a couple of days, said, no, we’re not going to prosecute this.
Partly that’s because the documents that Congress is seeking are the videos, or the oral transcripts, of Joe Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur. The president has claimed executive privilege over those. So now, Representative Luna wants to take the next step, which is to invoke what we call Congress’s inherent powers to hold someone in contempt for refusing to comply.
Essentially, she wants to claim that he is obstructing Congress from moving forward with its investigation into President Biden and the whole impeachment inquiry.”
Bowman: Has this ever been invoked before?
Mellen, Jr.: “Rarely. Now, the last time Congress tried to do something like this was in 1934. There were some talks about holding people in contempt. They talked about doing it in 2020 to get to the bottom of investigations into President Trump and so on at that time, but they didn’t go anywhere.
The big difference right now, what we’re seeing is we’re in the heat of an election year, just like we were in 2020. But we’ve also got the refusal of the Justice Department to take action against Merrick Garland, which there’s no surprise there. There’s probably nothing really to take action on.
But what Representative Luna is trying to do is make this a privileged motion, which is an important aspect of this because the privileged motion means that it can supersede all other business that the House has to do. A privileged motion must be voted on within two days by the House, two business days.
I think the debate performance on Thursday night probably changed the plans a lot because there’s no, there’s no way to sugarcoat this, that it was a miserable debate performance. And a lot of the fears that Democrats had of Joe Biden: his age, his competence, all of that, was on display for 51 million people to see.
There’s no spinning that, that it didn’t look good. Now, does that mean they still want the tapes? That’s really a question that only Representative Luna knows.”
There was no resolution on inherent contempt brought to the House floor on Friday like Luna originally posted on social media.
Mellen said a lot of this could be for political show.
“A lot of this is playing to the base,” he said. “So we’re in an election year, we need to rally the base. And so a lot of our politics is about that today.”
However, with Monday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity, the whole thing might be moot.
And USF assistant professor of instruction Kirsten England said it’s unlikely Garland will be forced to testify.
“I think it would be, encompassed within that decision at this point and I do not think that they can coerce Garland to say anything at this point, with the understanding of that ruling,” she said. “Having said that, that ruling, people are up in arms about it, but it just kind of holds a precedent.”
England said the high court’s ruling didn’t really change anything – executive, or presidential privilege, covers any act that is outlined within the Constitution.
A vote for inherent contempt was not brought to the floor during the session on Tuesday.
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