House Holds Attorney General Merrick Garland in Contempt

But we begin here with some breaking news at this hour. House lawmakers just moments ago voting 216 to 207 to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over audio of President Biden's interview with former special counsel Robert Hur. Now, his interview of course focused on the president's handling of those classified documents. This vote comes just weeks after the White House blocked the release of the recordings to lawmakers. Hur's report, which concluded last month that he would not bring criminal charges against Biden for his handling of this classified material. It depicted the President, and quoting here as, "A sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory." The Justice Department has released transcripts of the interview, and Attorney General Garland testified before Congress about his decision.

I will not be intimidated and the Justice Department will not be intimidated. We will continue to do our jobs free from political influence and we will not back down from defending democracy.

All right, ABC News' Jay O'Brien has more for us from Capitol Hill. So Jay, now that this has passed here, what happens next? This goes to the DOJ, right?

It goes to the DOJ, Kana, and then it is up to the Department of Justice as to whether or not they actually want to bring criminal charges. A contempt of Congress is a referral to the DOJ. And then House Republicans have been somewhat tight-lipped about what their plan is after that. I just spoke minutes ago with house speaker Mike Johnson. As he came off the floor after this vote, he said that the House did its job by holding Garland in contempt for refusing to turn over that audio. And then I asked him, what happens if the DOJ declines to bring criminal charges? He said to me, Kana, "We'll have to see."

We'll have to see. And Jay, I do want to share with you that we just got a statement here from the DOJ, the Justice Department, saying it's deeply disappointed that the House of Representatives has turned a serious Congressional authority into a partisan weapon. They also talked, Jay, about today's vote. They say it disregards the constitutional separation of powers and the DOJ's need to protect its investigation. (02:12) And Jay, look, probably no surprise in this statement here, what we're hearing, but I know as this vote was playing out here, it was critical that Republicans fell in line. I know you had your eye on those moderate Republicans in particular. How did this vote go down?

We did. And Republicans did lose one of their own. David Joyce, a moderate Republican of Ohio. But other than that, he was the lone Republican no vote here. Because of the slim number that House Republicans control that chamber with, you always have to watch these votes for any kind of defections, because even just a few can be critical and tank a vote, as we saw, for instance, during the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, when that vote was tanked when just a handful of moderate Republicans opposed that effort. So Republicans did lose one of their own. (02:57) Overall though, the tone we heard Republicans going into this vote is that they felt that this was something that they needed to do because the Attorney General didn't turn over the audio after it was subpoenaed. Now, the reasoning that the White House gave for not turning over that audio and exerting executive privilege over the audio and trying to essentially force Garland's hand and mean that he couldn't turn it over no matter what is that they said that that audio would, A, be cut up and used potentially for political purposes. And B, the argument that the attorney general gave and the White House gave is that, by handing over that recording, it would discourage future subjects of federal investigations from participating in the investigations because they could be fearful that any kind of media, in this case audio of an interview that they gave, could then be handed over to Congress. (03:44) Nonetheless, the argument that House Republicans made and the argument that they gave to their ranks and was successful in getting enough Republicans to vote for this was that this was an act of congressional oversight and needs to be seen through. Speaker Johnson, in addition to speaking to me, also issued a statement, and the gist of that statement, the way he ended it was, "We need the audio," Kana.

All right, Jay O'Brien reporting there from the Hill with that vote. Thank you so much for being here with us, Jay.