Rogue faction of House Republicans wants to arrest attorney general

A group of House Republicans is trying to have Attorney General Merrick Garland arrested for not handing over the audiotapes of President Biden’s interviews with special counsel Robert Hur, but their mission is meeting resistance within the party.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, Florida Republican, is leading the charge to hold Mr. Garland in inherent contempt, a special charge that, if passed, would allow Congress to take the attorney general into custody and force him to testify about withholding the audiotapes.

She vowed this week that if Mr. Garland did not adhere to the House’s subpoena for the tapes, she would force a vote on arresting him as soon as Friday.

“What we’re trying to do right now is, again, Garland, if he wants to avoid this, let Congress hear the tapes,” Ms. Luna said. “You cannot ignore this. People are in jail for way less. So let us hear the tapes, we’ll go to the Department of Justice. We will listen to them, but let us do our jobs. And we won’t have to do this.”

Ms. Luna’s new push comes after nearly every House Republican voted to hold Mr. Garland in contempt of Congress earlier this month for refusing to comply with a subpoena to turn over the tapes of Mr. Hur’s October interview with Mr. Biden.

Mr. Hur’s report of the interviews was focused on whether he mishandled classified documents, but called into question the president’s cognitive ability. Mr. Hur declined to press charges against Mr. Biden because, he said, a jury would be sympathetic to the president, whom he described as a well-meaning, forgetful, old man.

Republicans’ previous attempt at accountability for Mr. Garland, unsurprisingly, went nowhere when the Justice Department declined to charge the head of the agency, arguing that he was acting on an executive order from Mr. Biden to withhold the audio.

If the inherent contempt play is successful, Mr. Garland would be put into custody by the House Sergeant-at-Arms under House Speaker Mike Johnson’s direction, and then forced to testify before lawmakers.

But detractors within the Republican Party believe relying on that power, last used in 1934, is more theatrical than substantive.

Rep. John Duarte, California Republican, was unsure where Mr. Garland would even be held in custody — he said that the rumor was the attorney general might be held in a hotel room.

He argued that Republicans did not need to escalate their war with Mr. Garland to the level of inherent contempt, which he described as an extreme tactic meant to gain lawmakers “notoriety.”

“I know there’s probably enough people, enough Republicans in the camp with me that this isn’t going to pass,” Mr. Duarte told The Washington Times.

Even some who support the move acknowledge that it probably won’t go anywhere.

Rep. Max Miller, Ohio Republican, told The Washington Times that though he believed that the inherent contempt gambit would ultimately fail, he still supported it because of his own personal experience receiving a subpoena to appear in front of the Jan. 6 special committee.

“I can tell you what would’ve happened to me. They would come arrest me and they would probably throw me in the clink and sentence me to a little bit of time and hold me accountable,” said Mr. Miller, who accordingly complied with the subpoena.

“Well, the attorney general should be held to the same standard and Congress does have that oversight ability,” he said.

And Mr. Johnson, Louisiana Republican, has not fully endorsed the move.

He announced Wednesday that the Judiciary Committee would be suing the Justice Department to gain access to the tapes as part of its impeachment inquiry, but did not completely shut down Ms. Luna’s attempt.

“We’re looking at all avenues. I’ve talked to Anna Paulina Luna and our colleagues about various ideas,” said Mr. Johnson. “But … we’re gonna be as aggressive as we can and use every tool in our arsenal to make sure that happens because we have an obligation in the Constitution.”

While the inherent contempt power hasn’t been used in 90 years, the current GOP isn’t the party looking to resurrect an arcane procedure to handle a dispute with the executive branch over access to materials.

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 President Trump’s ties to Russia.

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