What is on these tapes?
President Biden cited executive privilege Thursday to block the House Oversight Committee from getting copies of five hours of audio recordings from his interviews with Special Counsel Robert Hur on Oct. 8-9, 2023, as well as tapes of ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer allegedly admitting to deleting incriminating recordings of Biden discussing classified information.
Bizarre: The transcript of the Hur interview got released weeks ago, so the audio can’t reveal any hard information.
So what is Biden afraid of Americans hearing?
Biden’s kibosh came after Attorney General Merrick Garland refused to turn the tapes over and asked the White House to step in, claiming: “Production of these recordings to the Committees would raise an unacceptable risk of undermining the Department’s ability to conduct similar high-profile criminal investigations.”
That’s transparent bull: Again, we’re only talking about the audio version, not the words themselves.
So Garland was only offering Biden a pretext for preventing the tapes’ release without appearing too self-serving.
White House Counsel Ed Siskel’s reasoning is even more bewildering: He says House Republicans’ “likely goal” is “to chop [the tapes] up, distort them, and use them for partisan political purposes.”
So can anyone, with any recording of any politician: What makes this audio so special?
We’re left guessing that it’s just more evidence of what Americans see every time Biden speaks without a teleprompter: He’s a confused man in marked cognitive decline.
But the stonewall raises suspicion that the tapes are somehow worse — damning enough for Garland to risk being charged with contempt of Congress.
Stop feeding the inevitable conspiracy theories, Mr. President.
Release the tapes, and let Americans come to their own conclusions.