The House voted on Wednesday to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress for refusing to play along with Republicans’ attempt to politically embarrass Garland’s boss. The contempt referral, which saw every Republican but one sign off on the resolution, marks the third presidential administration in a row to see the House pass a contempt resolution against an attorney general.
That statistic suggests a partisan tit-for-tat, but it belies major differences between the cases, both in substance and in politics. This week’s vote showcases the GOP’s willingness to dull the tools to hold officials accountable. The goal is to bludgeon their opponents and lessen the sting when those tools are later used against Republicans.
That statistic suggests a partisan tit-for-tat, but it belies major differences between the cases, both in substance and in politics.
At issue in Wednesday’s vote was Garland’s decision not to turn over audio of special counsel Robert Hur’s interview with President Joe Biden. That interview was conducted last year as Hur was investigating Biden for his handling of classified documents after leaving the vice presidency. Hur opted against pressing charges, but he did issue a scathing report calling Biden an “elderly man with a poor memory.”
Hur’s report, however, was undercut by the full transcript. In part to revive the investigation’s political utility, House Republicans want the audio so that it could be played ad nauseum between now and the election. Garland cited executive privilege over the recordings, given the clear lack of legislative purpose when the transcript has already been delivered. Unsurprisingly, that didn’t satisfy the same Republicans who led the failed efforts to find impeachment-worthy evidence against Biden, and who are now taking out their ire on the attorney general.
This situation is similar to one from just over a decade ago, when Congress first held a sitting Cabinet member in contempt. Flashback to the Obama administration, when House Republicans were angry at Attorney General Eric Holder over his handling of the “Fast and Furious” scandal. We don’t have time to get into the details of the government’s extremely stupid sting operation to track gun running in Mexico, but it was a favorite GOP talking point to beat for years. Reflecting that bipartisanship was even then on life support, seven Democrats voted with all but two Republicans on the contempt resolution against Holder for refusing to hand over every requested document.
Tellingly, the furor was just the latest version of Republicans accusing Democrats of a dastardly cover-up in an attempt to find a party-swapped version of the Watergate scandal. It was the exact same playbook we later saw the House run to gin up Fox News headlines, with claims that the IRS was supposedly targeting conservatives (it wasn’t) or that the Obama administration had purposefully lied to the American public about its failure to prevent a terror attack in Libya (it didn’t).
Let’s compare those circumstances to those surrounding William Barr, the second attorney general under former President Donald Trump, being hit with a contempt resolution. He and then-Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross were called out for refusing to turn over documents related to the Trump administration’s attempt to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. Ross had claimed that the data would be used to help enforce voting rights laws, an explanation that defied basically everything about the Trump administration’s view of both voting rights and undocumented immigrants.
Unlike the examples from the Obama era, though, there actually was underhandedness afoot: the administration really did lie about its rationale for adding the census question. The Supreme Court eventually smacked down the attempted changes to the census in large part for the administration being shady about their motives. Chief Justice John Roberts went so far in the opinion as to call the justifications for the question “contrived” and “a distraction” that illegally hid the true reasons for the Trump administration’s decision. Holding Garland in contempt is the most recent attempt to flatten the playing field in voter’s minds. Broadening the scope a little, the resolution against Garland also stands apart from the contempt cases against Trump allies for defying subpoenas from the House Jan. 6 committee. The House approved referrals for contempt against former White House adviser Steve Bannon, former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows for their refusal to cooperate with the investigation. The Justice Department filed charges against Bannon and Navarro and won convictions in both cases. (That’s not even getting into the fact that several of the members who voted to hold Garland in contempt had also defied congressional subpoenas themselves.) Holding Garland in contempt is the most recent attempt to flatten the playing field in voter’s minds. After all, if both sides are holding each other in contempt, then there’s no reason to believe that Republicans have done anything uniquely wrong. But despite their attempts to claim otherwise, just because both parties have used a mechanism for accountability does not mean it was done for equally valid reasons. Trump’s impeachments were based on evidence that he had committed high crimes and misdemeanors. Despite lacking similar evidence, Republicans have used the very fact the impeachments against him occurred as an excuse to act out a pantomime of the same process against Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. In targeting Garland, Republicans are once again using a tool intended to promote transparency and oversight to take cheap shots at an opponent and weaken the tool’s impact when GOP officials are once again in the crosshairs.
Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He focuses on politics and policymaking at the federal level, including Congress and the White House. 
