Debates will answer questions

To the editor:

On Feb. 5, Merrick Garland, the U.S. Attorney General, received Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report and conclusions following his interviews with President Biden about the classified documents found at Biden’s home in Delaware and other locations.

Hur concluded there was insufficient evidence to justify charging the president with criminal misconduct.

The House Oversight Committee, chaired by Kentucky Republican congressman James Comer, requested and received from the U.S. Justice Department the 250-page transcript of the two interviews, which extended over a five-hour period.

On March 12, the House Judiciary Committee — chaired by Ohio Republican congressman Jim Jordan — held a public hearing in which members of the committee questioned Hur about the interviews and his conclusion. At no point during the hearing did Hur, armed with a copy of the transcript, state that it was incomplete or inaccurate in any way.

Nevertheless, in May, Congressman Comer — whose months-long efforts to come up with crimes and misdemeanors sufficient to impeach the president have come to naught — demanded that the Justice Department give the committee the audiotapes of the interview, ostensibly to confirm that the transcript did not leave anything out or was inaccurate.

Citing executive privilege, the White House has refused to comply with Comer’s request.

On May 16, the Republican members of the Oversight and Judiciary committees voted to hold Attorney General Garland in contempt of Congress for failing to hand over the audiotapes.

That same day, Congressman Comer sent out an email seeking donations from his constituents and others in which he claimed that Biden and his advisers were “terrified that I, James Comer, will release the recordings, forcing the media and the Democrats to answer for the dismal decline of Biden’s mental state.”

Obviously, since the transcript is complete, the only reason that Comer and his fellow Republicans want the audiotapes is to use edited parts of them in ads, in attempts to prove Biden’s diminishing mental competence.

Perhaps the first televised presidential debate between Biden and former president Trump, scheduled to take place on June 27, will reveal to some degree the mental competence of both candidates.

Miriam Levine Helbok