Luna: The Proof is in “the Tapes”

by Sharon Rondeau

(Jun. 17, 2024) — As she did on Thursday evening with Fox News host Jesse Watters, first-term Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL13) told Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures” that “if the tapes come out” of Joe Biden’s interview last fall with former Special Counsel Robert Hur, Biden will not be the 2024 Democrat presidential nominee.

With Election Day November 5, less than five months remain for voters to make their choice in what presently appears to be a second contest between major-party candidates Biden and 45th President Donald J. Trump.

A former U.S. attorney for the District of Maryland and Justice Department official under then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, Hur was selected by Garland to conduct a probe into the circumstances by which Biden came to possess classified documents dating back many years which came to light after his vice-presidency under Barack Obama concluded in January 2017.

Hur’s report on his investigation, which resulted in no referral for a criminal charge, was issued February 5. In it he characterized Biden as “a sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory” who would likely engender “reasonable doubt” during a jury trial.

It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him—by then a former president well into his eighties—of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness,” Hur wrote on page 10, then declined to recommend prosecution because the evidence was “not sufficient to convict.”

A week later, House Republicans on the Ways and Means, Oversight and Judiciary Committees requested of the Justice Department audio-, video-recordings, transcripts and notes from Hur’s interviews with Biden.

Transcripts of the October 8 and 9 sessions were released the following month, but in mid-May, the White House and Garland’s DOJ claimed “executive privilege” over the audio-recordings, resulting in two congressional subpoenas.

Thus far, Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, has defied the subpoenas, culminating in an affirmative contempt of Congress vote Wednesday.

Assistant Attorney General Carlos Felipe Uriarte responded with a letter to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson stating the Department would not prosecute Garland because his defiance of the subpoenas “did not constitute a crime.”

A congressional alternative to court action, Luna told Bartiromo, is pursuing the matter with an “inherent contempt of Congress” resolution she introduced several months ago. A method of obtaining information from government officials not invoked for more than 100 years, Luna told Bartiromo, “The House Sergeant-at-Arms would essentially go and get him (Garland) as well as the tapes, bring him to the well of the House and really be a check-and-balance on the Department of Justice.”

According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS) in 2017, “Congress has three formal methods by which it can combat non-compliance with a duly issued subpoena. Each of these methods invokes the authority of a separate branch of government. First, the long dormant inherent contempt power permits Congress to rely on its own constitutional authority to detain and imprison a contemnor until the individual complies with congressional
demands. Second, the criminal contempt statute permits Congress to certify a contempt citation to the executive branch for the criminal prosecution of the contemnor. Finally, Congress may rely on the judicial branch to enforce a congressional subpoena. Under this procedure, Congress may seek a civil judgment from a federal court declaring that the individual in question is legally obligated to comply with the congressional subpoena.”

“That vote will be coming to the floor,” Luna told Bartiromo, though she did not suggest when.

Bartiromo responded by acknowledging the “ums” and “ahs” were “edited out” of the Biden-Hur transcript, then followed up with, “Are there any other worries that you have? Why must you see — hear — the audio-tapes that you didn’t get from the transcript? Was it doctored in any way?”

“I believe that it’s possible that it has been doctored,” Luna replied, “but I also think, Maria, that it’s really going to show the American people whether or not Biden is actually capable of making those decisions. Remember, we have a foreign-policy debacle right now; we have Russian warships off of our coast, and if he’s not able to stand fit as president, I don’t think that he’s going to be the nominee this November. I think that’s why Democrats are trying to protect him, and the DOJ.”

“So you don’t think he’s going to be the nominee?” Bartiromo pressed.

“Not if these tapes come out; no, Maria; I think that they have big problems and I think that his cognitive inability is the number one issue for them currently,” Luna said.

Also interviewed during the segment was Sen. Eric Schmitt, a former Missouri attorney general, regarding Trump’s meetings on Thursday with House and Senate Republicans to map out an agenda should Trump win re-election in November.