While recovering from the birth of her first child and unable to vote, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna learned of an obscure House proceeding that could lead to the arrest of Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Frustrated that the Justice Department has not acted on the House that charged Garland with criminal contempt earlier this month, it will force a vote on an “inherent contempt resolution” this week.
The criminal contempt ruling referred Garland to his own Justice Department for criminal charges after he refused to turn over audio of Biden’s special counsel interview.
But the Justice Department quickly announced that it will not act on the prosecutor’s recommendation.
If Luna’s resolution passes, it could force Garland to stand trial before the House and, if convicted, he would be detained by the House Sergeant at Arms.
While recovering from the birth of her first child and unable to vote, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna learned of an obscure House proceeding that could lead to the arrest of Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Inherent contempt last used in 1934 against Washington lawyer William MacCracken, who spent 10 days in prison for refusing to comply with a Senate subpoena.
‘I was told I couldn’t vote when I was recovering from having my son… what I discovered was that a lot of members didn’t know it really existed. And then I met with the parliamentarian because he had no faith in the Department of Justice.’
Luna was the only member of this Congress to have a child while in office.
“Garland is currently covering up, at the risk of essentially becoming a criminal through Biden, Biden’s goal of staying in office at all costs, even though it is very evident that they are hiding something from the American people,” he told DailyMail. .com in an interview.
House Republicans had issued two subpoenas seeking audio recordings of Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur about his mishandling of classified documents and his interviews with ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer.
The Justice Department claimed it had been too accommodating to House Republicans and their investigations by handing over a transcript of Biden’s interview.
But Republicans are skeptical about the accuracy of the transcript.
“It’s essential that we conduct our investigation to make sure that they’re honest, that the transcripts haven’t been manipulated, and then I think there’s a lot of concern that there are some cognitive issues with Biden.”
Frustrated that the Justice Department has not acted on the House accusing Garland of criminal contempt, Luna will force a vote on her inherent contempt resolution this week.
Since Luna will make the resolution “privileged,” it won’t have to follow normal procedures, going through committee and then waiting for leaders to introduce it in the House of Representatives.
Luna said he met with President Mike Johnson about inherent contempt and that he prefers to work through the court system to try to force the Justice Department to turn over the transcripts.
With the narrowest majority in the House, Republicans will need almost all of their side’s votes for the resolution to pass. On Monday morning, Luna sent a letter to his colleagues explaining the need to vote “yes” on his legislation.
‘The Department of Justice and the attorney general cannot be the ultimate decider of whether or not to pursue a congressional subpoena. If Congress allows this to happen, we run the risk of becoming subordinate to the attorney general and being completely neutralized in our ability to legislate,’ Luna argued. ‘
Why would anyone in the executive branch meet our demands for information if the fulfillment of those demands depends on the actions of another department within their own branch?
The House-wide vote to hold Garland in criminal contempt won the support of all Republicans except Rep. Dave Joyce, R-Ohio, who worried it would politicize the justice system.
During the interview, he said Biden seemed “old” with a “bad memory” like him and had a series of other stumbles.
‘I was told I couldn’t vote when I was recovering from having my son… what I discovered was that many members didn’t know it really existed. And then I met with the parliamentarian because he had no faith in the DOJ,’ Luna said.
“That nice old man with a bad memory is in charge of our nuclear launch codes and, more importantly, he’s supposed to represent us on the world stage,” Luna said.
‘When you have someone who is in that position and maybe doesn’t have the best memory or isn’t cognitively there, our adversaries know that. And you can see with the withdrawal from Afghanistan, shortly after, that China and Russia are moving closer to the United States in our foreign policy. And you saw the invasion in Ukraine. You saw how it happened on October 7th. It feels like the world is in chaos right now because of that.