The Justice Department says Attorney General Merrick Garland will not be prosecuted for contempt of Congress after refusing to turn over audio of President Joe Biden’s interview in his classified documents case because his actions “did not constitute a crime.”
Right. Contempt of Congress charges are submitted to the DOJ to prosecute. And the DOJ has the policy to not prosecute those situations, as I posted previously.
Executive privilege doesn’t just disappear, it would still apply to everything under previous presidents as well, but it’s the current President that determines whether to remove it. Biden a while ago said it wouldn’t apply to things Trump’s administration is being investigated for.
Executive privilege exists specifically to prevent congress from using its subpoenas powers excessively and interfering with the business of the executive branch doing its job. The, uh, co-equal, executive branch.
for example by subpoenas for extremely sensitive testimony by a sitting president specifically so it can harvest damaging sound bites to use in their election campaign.
Such a use would unduly chill the ability of the DOJ to interview witnesses and subjects in an investigation and expect candid cooperation.
When a POTUS invokes executive privilege, it goes to the courts to decide. Not congress. It is difficult to believe there is a legitimate need for crafting legislation, however, since they already have transcripts of the testimony. They don’t need the audio recordings.
It’s more that after your term is over, you still have protection against having to answer for official acts during your term when you were still president. They’ve gone after Trump for the classified documents because that was not part of his official acts, so Biden has nothing to proect.