There is "no difference" in President Joe Biden blocking audio tapes of his interview with special counsel Robert Hur and former President Richard Nixon "trying to hide his audio tapes during the Watergate investigation," House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer said Tuesday on Newsmax.
The Kentucky Republican also said Biden "exhausted his executive privilege" when he allowed transcripts from the interview to be released.
"We don't believe that executive privilege would hold up in court, and [neither do] the attorneys that have advised us correctly throughout this whole investigation where we faced obstacle and obstruction from the Department of Justice," Comer said on "Wake Up America." "Joe Biden has always said one thing and turned around and done the other."
Last week, Biden asserted executive privilege while refusing to allow the audio of the interview to be released amid efforts by House Republicans to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress.
Comer said not only does his committee want the tapes, but also "just about every major mainstream media network as well."
"This should be something that should be readily available," said Comer. "The other reason we want these audiotapes is the transcript was written by the Department of Justice. I can't tell you the number of times that people in the Department of Justice, people in the FBI, people in the IRS have not been truthful with our committee throughout this whole investigation. ... The audiotapes would prove whether or not the transcript is right."
With the presidential election nearing, Comer said the investigation into Biden has "been a race against the clock" for two years.
"The Biden strategy to cover up all of their corruption has been to stall, obstruct, do whatever they could to run out the clock and hope that by some miracle, the Democrats flipped the House," at which point the party would regain control of the Oversight Committee and bury the investigation, said Comer.
Hur had a "level of frustration" that led him to add statements to his report concerning Biden's mental faculties, Comer added.
"All of his talking heads go out almost on a daily basis and say some false narrative about the investigation that's not been true," said Comer. "Turn over those audiotapes. Be transparent. That's what this White House said they would do when they were running for the presidency."
Comer also discussed last week's fracas between Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, telling Newsmax that he's neither a middle school teacher nor a therapist, and said his "sensitivity training" didn't cover a scenario like that.
He added that he told ranking Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin that he thought they should go on recess so they could "cool" off their respective party members.
"I told Marjorie, 'You're going to have to tone it, you're going to have to calm down,'" Comer recalled, but after they came back in "they all started into it again."
"I'm doing everything in my ability to ensure that we have credible hearings," but still, "you're going to have outbursts like this," Comer added.
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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