Congresswoman Wants AG Garland Arrested for Contempt
WASHINGTON — A member of Congress said Sunday she wants to use a rarely invoked legal authority to compel the arrest of U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland for contempt.
The House voted last week to hold Garland in contempt of Congress for failing to turn over an investigator’s recording of President Joe Biden being interviewed about classified documents found in his garage.
The Justice Department is declining to prosecute Garland, who heads the Justice Department.
Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida said in a Fox News interview that she wants the House sergeant-at-arms to arrest Garland.
Luna has introduced a resolution recommending the arrest and discussed it with the speaker of the House.
“I anticipated that the Department of Justice would not do their job and so I had this teed up and ready to go,” Luna said while being interviewed by Maria Bartiromo on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”
She said she plans to push for a vote on her resolution.
“I’ve brought this to Speaker [Mike] Johnson’s attention,” Luna said.
Luna was referring to the “inherent contempt” power of the House established under federal law. It authorizes subpoenaed witnesses who refuse to cooperate with a congressional investigation to be arrested and brought to trial in the House.
If convicted, the offender can be punished by a fine of up to $100,000 and imprisonment “for not less than one month nor more than 12 months.” Congress last invoked inherent contempt more than a century ago.
Johnson so far has declined to use the inherent contempt authority, instead saying the House would use a lawsuit to enforce its contempt citation.
The law allows “the sergeant-at-arms to essentially go and get him, as well as the tapes [of Biden’s testimony in the probe of Special Counsel Robert Hur],” Luna said.
Prosecuting Garland under inherent contempt would “really be a check-and-balance on the Department of Justice,” Luna said.
The House Judiciary Committee demanded that Garland turn over an audio recording of Hur interviewing Biden about classified documents he improperly took and stored in his Delaware home after serving as vice president during the Obama administration.
Garland turned over a transcript but declined on the audio tape, saying it was exempted under federal law from public disclosure because it was part of a Justice Department investigation. Releasing it publicly could create a disincentive for witnesses in other cases to cooperate with investigators, he said.
Republicans in Congress said they need to hear the audio tape to determine whether Biden is fit to serve as president and whether his answers appeared to be truthful.
After they voted to hold Garland in contempt, the Justice Department issued a determination Friday explaining why it would not prosecute the attorney general.
“Consistent with this long standing position and uniform practice, the department has determined that the responses by Attorney General Garland to the subpoenas issued by the committees did not constitute a crime, and accordingly the department will not bring the congressional contempt citation before a grand jury or take any other action to prosecute the attorney general,” a Justice Department statement said.
Luna showed her dissatisfaction with the Justice Department’s decision in a post on X Friday.
“I do not have faith in the DOJ, and I don’t think the American people do either,” Luna wrote. “Garland is not above the law, and neither is the DOJ.”
Garland was the third U.S. attorney general to be cited for contempt of Congress. None were criminally prosecuted.
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