Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) made himself very clear on Wednesday ahead of the Republican-led vote to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress.
The vote was concerning Garland’s not turning over the audio of President Joe Biden’s interview with former Special Counsel Robert Hur related to his classified documents case. A full, unedited transcript of the interview was released. Raskin then ruthlessly mocked his Republican colleagues and took them to task for the “useful distraction from the complete and devastating implosion of the Biden impeachment probe”:
[O]ur colleagues invite us today to become the first Congress in the history of the United States to hold someone in contempt for complying with our demands. And their target is the Attorney General of the United States. Attorney General Garland gave us the special counsel’s report on President Biden in full. He made the special counsel available to us in committee for hours of testimony where he answered all our questions, and he provided the full transcript of the president’s voluntary five-hour interview with the special counsel — all 250 pages of it. The whole world can read President Biden’s interview and his answers unedited. But that’s apparently not enough.Now they want to hold the attorney general in contempt for not turning over the audiotape of the interview that we have the verbatim transcript of. And why is that important? Well, in
case you’ve lost the thread of this madcap wild goose chase, America, remember, this is an impeachment investigation. Do they think that the holy grail of the 118th Congress, evidence of a presidential high crime and misdemeanor, is lurking in the pauses or the background throat clearings and sneezes on the audiotape? Well, of course not. They know there’s no high crime or misdemeanor to be found, because they’ve spent the last 17 months and millions of our taxpayer dollars looking for it, and it simply does not exist. They literally don’t even know what they’re looking for anymore.So why do they want it? Well, they’re hoping that in the five hours of President Biden’s testimony, they can find a mispronounced word or phrase or a brief stammer, which they can then turn into an embarrassing political TV attack ad. Get it, America? That’s what this is all about. And holding the attorney general, the United States in contempt is one more useful distraction from the complete and devastating implosion of the Biden impeachment probe, which, of course, was the number one priority of these talented leaders.
Watch the video above via C-SPAN.