The Department of Justice denied on Monday House Republicans' demand for audio tape recordings of President Joe Biden's interview with investigators regarding his classified documents probe, according to CNN.
Per the report, the DOJ noted in a letter that "committees already have all of the transcripts of the interviews they requested from [special counsel Robert] Hur’s investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents, including the transcripts of interviews with the president and with his ghostwriter, which the department turned over Monday."
Hur announced in his special report that he decided against charging the president over his mishandling of documents.
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House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) slammed the department, CNN reports, over its refusal to hand over the audio.
"The Biden Administration does not get to determine what Congress needs and does not need for its oversight of the executive branch," the GOP leader said in a statement, according to the report, "responding to the DOJ argument that House Republicans don’t need the audio tapes when they have the transcripts of the interviews."
Assistant Attorney General Carlos Felipe Uriarte wrote in a letter to the committees, "The Department is concerned that the committees’ particular focus on continuing to demand information that is cumulative of information we already gave you — what the President and Mr. Hur’s team said in the interview — indicates that the committees’ interests may not be in receiving information in service of legitimate oversight or investigatory functions, but to serve political purposes that should have no role in the treatment of law enforcement files."
Last month, Anthony Coley, a senior adviser to Attorney General Merrick Garland suggested selecting Hur to investigate Biden was the wrong decision.
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"In retrospect, and I say this as somebody who has a great deal of respect for the attorney general, in retrospect, the attorney general made the wrong choice in selecting Robert Hur to be the special counsel," Coley said during an episode of MSNBC's The Weekend. "I think he should have, Garland should have appointed a special counsel who was perhaps at the end of a distinguished legal career and not someone who was midcareer Robert Hur in his early 50s."
CNN's full report is here.