The leaders of the House impeachment inquiry, Congressmen James Comer and Jim Jordan, are escalating their demands that Attorney General Garland hand over audio recordings of President Biden and his ghostwriter’s interviews with Special Counsel Robert Hur. Mr. Garland, who’s refusing to hand over the recordings, has nine days to comply before he’s held in contempt of Congress.

“On February 27, 2024, the Committee on the Judiciary and the Committee on Oversight and Accountability issued subpoenas to you for a narrow and specific set of material in the Department of Justice’s possession relating to Special Counsel Robert K. Hur’s investigation of President Joe Biden’s ‘willful’ mishandling of classified documents,” the chairmen wrote to the attorney general.  

“Your response to the subpoenas remains inadequate, suggesting that you are withholding records for partisan purposes and to avoid political embarrassment for President Biden,” they continued. 

The existence of the letter was first reported by the Daily Caller. 

“If the Department continues to withhold materials responsive to the Committees’ subpoenas—namely, the audio recordings of Special Counsel Hur’s interviews with President Biden and Mr. Zwonitzer—we will have no choice but to invoke contempt of Congress proceedings,” the chairmen said. 

They say the Department of Justice must respond by April 25. 

Mr. Jordan, who is the Judiciary Committee chairman, first threatened Mr. Garland with contempt in March after the attorney general delayed sending the interview transcripts to Congress. The justice department ultimately complied with the request for the transcript. 

Messrs. Jordan and Comer then demanded they get access to the audio recordings of Mr. Biden and his long-time ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer, who helped the president write both his 2007 and 2017 memoirs. 

Mr. Zwonitzer, who is a journalist and author, was given access to classified information, specifically files related to the Obama administration’s Afghanistan policy, even though he did not have the proper security clearance. 

Mr. Zwonitzer told investigators that during a 2017 interview with the now-president at his home in Delaware, Mr. Biden said he had just found “the classified stuff” downstairs and shared it with the writer. The special counsel’s investigator found classified documents improperly stored in Mr. Biden’s garage and in an adjacent room.

The justice department has refused to turn over the audio files because, it argues, Republicans are on a partisan witch hunt. “Our efforts at cooperation prove that we are, and continue to be, willing to do our part to show the American people that the officials who serve them can work together productively,” the assistant attorney general for legislative affairs, Carlos Uriarte, said in a letter to the two chairmen on April 8.

Mr. Uriarte wrote that the “escalation and threats of criminal contempt” will not lead to a release of the interview audio. “We are therefore concerned that the Committees are disappointed not because you didn’t receive information but because you did. We urge the Committees to avoid conflict rather than seek it,” he said.

Mr. Comer is already preparing criminal referrals as part of his impeachment inquiry, hoping that “swift” justice will come for Hunter Biden and others who testified and allegedly lied to investigators.  

For a criminal referral to have teeth, Mr. Biden’s justice department would need to enforce it against its own attorney general, which is unlikely. The department did, though, recently lodge contempt charges against two of President Trump’s aides, Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro. Navarro is currently in prison for the offense. Should Mr. Trump return to power in January, a new attorney general could charge Mr. Garland and seek to have him incarcerated.