Luna forces vote to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in inherent contempt

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna succeeded Wednesday in her effort to force a vote on whether to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in inherent contempt of Congress, though the lawmaker only wants to fine the top Justice Department official rather than arrest him.

Ms. Luna’s original goal was to use the arcane procedure to arrest Mr. Garland for withholding tapes of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s interview with President Biden.

However, the Florida Republican offered a revamped version of her resolution that would instead fine him $10,000 a day until he hands over the tapes.

The House is expected to vote on the resolution on Thursday.

The lawmaker’s push stemmed from Mr. Garland’s refusal to comply with a subpoena from the Judiciary Committee to get ahold of the tapes. Ms. Luna argued on the House floor that an average American served a subpoena would be expected to adhere to it.

“Why should the attorney general of the United States be held to a different standard,” she said.

The House voted last month to hold Mr. Garland in contempt of Congress for withholding the tapes after he argued that he could not release the tapes because Mr. Biden exerted executive privilege over them.
House Democrats slammed the resolution, calling it “stupid” and hypocritical in its goal.

Rep. James McGovern, Massachusetts Democrat, argued that it was the GOP’s attempt at weaponizing the government to go after Mr. Garland — a tactic that House Republicans have built an entire subcommittee to combat.  

“Not only is this resolution a B.S. political stunt, it’s not even a good B.S. political stunt,” Mr. McGovern said. “This is a bad motion that could do massive damage to this institution’s standard.”

The inherent contempt power hasn’t been used in 90 years, though Democrats had flirted with in recent years when they held the reins in Congress.

In 2019, Democrats threatened to hold then-Attorney General William Barr in inherent contempt for refusing to comply with a subpoena to hand over the fully unredacted version of the report by special counsel Robert Mueller on former President Donald Trump’s ties to Russia.

While Mr. Barr was held in contempt, which went unprosecuted, nothing came of the calls from some Democrats to find him in inherent contempt.

Mr. Trump was in favor of Ms. Luna’s push, and argued on his social media platform Truth Social that Republicans should go further and subpoena Special Counsel Jack Smith.

“Republicans MUST GET TOUGH about stopping weaponization and cheating,” Mr. Trump said. “They may just be coming for me and my elections today, but they will come for all the Republicans very soon if they succeed!”

Though Republicans have doggedly pursued the tapes from Mr. Hur’s interview with the president as part of their impeachment inquiry into Mr. Biden, not all had been supportive of using the inherent-contempt power.

However House Speaker Mike Johnson, Louisiana Republican, did not shut down Ms. Luna, telling reporters Tuesday that if it were brought to the floor he would vote for it. But he noted that the move gave him “pause,” 
and said he preferred the route taken by the House Judiciary Committee. The panel sued the Justice department earlier this month to get access to the tapes.

“I’d rather do it the way that we’ve done in our present litigation, but we’ll let the chips fall where they may,” Mr. Johnson said.

The Judiciary Committee’s lawsuit asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to overrule Mr. Biden’s assertion of executive privilege, and order Mr. Garland to produce the tapes along with a separate interview the special counsel conducted with Mark Zwonitzer, the ghostwriter for Mr. Biden’s 2017 memoir.