Democratic Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett suggested the Republican Party’s sole goal with pushing for the public release of audio of special counsel Robert Hur’s interviews with President Joe Biden is to mislead Americans about him.
Republican lawmakers have demanded the audio recordings of the interviews, but the Department of Justice has only turned over the transcript, opting to withhold the audio despite the threat of holding Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt. Crockett on “CNN News Central” said the transcript is accurate and that Biden has been transparent, with Republicans being too unethical to trust with the audio.
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“We know that there is a real concern as it relates to alterations and fakes, especially coming from this side,” Crockett said. “We just heard from Donald Trump how he basically wanted to signal to Russia and he said, ‘hey, if you‘re listening Russia,’ right? So we know there’s a big concern about disinformation and misinformation. And we know that they continually perpetuate it.”
“And so the only thing that they would want to do with this audio is to basically misconstrue and pretend as if what people are reading is actually not what happened,” she continued. “And that is a real concern. If we had a party that lived up to being the ethical people that we were elected to be, then I don‘t think that there would be a big concern, but we know that they cannot be trusted with anything that can be manipulated.”
Host Brianna Keilar asked if Crockett wouldn’t want audio recordings released if they were from former President Donald Trump speaking to a special counsel.
“I‘m not saying that,” Crockett answered. “I can’t tell you what‘s going to happen in the future. What I can tell you is that we’re talking about an administration that has been completely transparent. I doubt that Trump would ever sit for anything voluntarily. You know what, that’s what this president did though. He voluntarily did this. This may actually end up producing a chill on people participating in a very voluntary way because you may end up in a situation such as this.”
“So I think you would have to look at the totality of the circumstances to determine whether or not this is something that we would need in addition to the fact we know that Robert Hur is not some democratic stooges,” she added. “We know that this is one of their guys.
Hur’s report published in February described Biden’s management of classified documents, with the special counsel opting not to pursue charges against the president. However, Hur noted that Biden seemed to forget when his vice presidency term started and finished as well as when his son, Beau Biden, passed away.
House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday says he feels his chamber has sufficient votes to hold Garland in contempt over the tapes, CNN reported. The vote is slated to occur Wednesday afternoon.
“People walked away from reading that report and felt as if the president has some sort of diminished capacity of some sort,” Crockett continued. “But you know what, for anybody that is concerned that that may be a real thing, they will have an opportunity to see the president perform in not one, but two debates against the former president. And we can see how people feel about whether or not his capacity is all the way there.”
If Biden were to go in front of a jury, he would present himself as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” Hur’s report indicated.
