Glenn Ivey Accuses GOP Of 'Abusing' Constitutional Authority With Biden Ghostwriter Contempt Hearing

6 months ago

At a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Thursday, Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-MD) spoke about President Biden's ghostwriter.

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Transcript

00:00Gentleman from Maryland is recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Along those lines,

00:05I'd like to to point out that this wasn't just raised two days ago in a

00:12letter from the White House. This was raised on April 12th by a letter from

00:17Mr. Zwonitzer's counsel to you, and it said explicitly that the

00:28these would deal with the president's personal papers and personal information.

00:32Therefore, the committee should seek the information through the executive branch.

00:37So this came up on April 12th, and then in addition to that, as Mr. Herr's report points

00:45out, and we've had that for months now, this information went from Mr. Zwonitzer to the

00:50Department of Justice. And in fact, some of the information that the chairman referenced,

00:57the materials that were deleted, Mr. Zwonitzer wouldn't even have those because they had to be

01:03restored by the Department of Justice after they received the computer that he had and used it to

01:10try and delete the information. So this is information that the committee should be seeking

01:16from the White House and from the Department of Justice and has chosen not to do it and has

01:21chosen not to bother with the accommodation process too. And that was raised in the letter

01:26that the White House sent two days ago. But I think it's important to point out that because

01:31this is actually a conflict, not between the committee and a private citizen, this is a

01:36conflict between the congressional, the legislative branch and the executive branch. We shouldn't just

01:42gloss over the fact that you can try and circumvent all of the law that's been put in

01:47place by the Supreme Court over the years in trying to address this and resolve it using a

01:53process that's informal. It's called the accommodation process. But the Supreme Court has said each

01:58branch must take cognizance of an implicit constitutional mandate to seek optimal

02:05accommodation through a realistic evaluation of the needs of the conflicting branches

02:10in the particular fact situation. Based on the colloquy just between the chairman and

02:15the congressman from California, it's clear that hasn't taken place. And I think it's

02:21also important to say that even though you got the letter from the White House two days ago,

02:27that doesn't mean we had to go forward today. In fact, I think based on what we've heard so far,

02:32we really shouldn't have. There should have been an effort to try and resolve this by reaching

02:36out through the to the executive branch and or the Department of Justice to get the information

02:42that way. And just along those lines, the other points that were raised both by the White House

02:51and by Mr. Zwanitzer, Mr. Zwanitzer raised the issue in his April 12th letter. First of all,

02:58the reporter's privilege, which the draft reporter, the amendment in the nature of a substitute

03:06dismisses based on the waiver clause. But, you know, I guess we'll have to have a court resolve

03:12that because everything seems to be needing to go to courts these days out of this committee,

03:17because we're abusing, I think, constitutional authority to have contempt power, but we're using

03:23it for fishing expedition after fishing expedition in ways that, you know, sadly, I think are obviously

03:28political. Because we know Mr. Herr has this information. We know that he did a criminal

03:34investigation and concluded that criminal charges were not appropriate here. And we also know that

03:41this committee isn't in the business of second guessing prosecutorial decisions of that nature.

03:47And by the way, the case law that's in place says that in this kind of scenario, the information

03:56needs to go to the heart of the matter. And I know you guys say it does, we'll set that to the side

04:00for the moment. But the party seeking the information must have exhausted every reasonable

04:07alternative source of information. And what the chairman just said a few minutes ago is you haven't

04:13even tried, haven't even reached out to the Department of Justice to follow up on this,

04:18haven't tried to address this by going to the White House and addressing the privilege arguments

04:25that are raised. Instead, we're going to rush to judgment here and try and get this done in a

04:29heartbeat. You know, I saw a similar matter to this when I was working on the Whitewater hearings.

04:39And Mrs. Clinton had written a book called It Takes a Village. The Republicans subpoenaed the

04:45ghostwriter. We didn't go to the to the ends of, you know, trying to hold somebody in criminal

04:50contempt. We use the accommodation process to try and resolve it. And we did. And, you know,

04:56I kind of bristle when people call us the lower chamber in contrast to the Senate. But

05:01based on the behavior today, and the way I think we were abusing our power,

05:06I think it's clear that that is the case today. And with that, I yield back.

Glenn Ivey Accuses GOP Of 'Abusing' Constitutional Authority With Biden Ghostwriter Contempt Hearing

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