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“Sounds totally to me in the context of this interview,” said Sara Zdeb, chief oversight advisor to Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), After Weinsheimer intervened to block a response from Byung Pak, a former American lawyer. from the Atlanta area. Pak resigned Jan.4 under pressure from Trump to interfere in election-related matters.
The exchange, one of twelve times Weisenheimer has blocked former officials from answering committee questions, underscores the tension facing the Biden DOJ and Attorney General Merrick Garland. While Congressional Democrats have widely praised Garland’s willingness to make witnesses available, interviews show that the Biden administration will continue to act to protect the interests of the executive branch.
And that tension could intensify as House and Senate investigators begin to deepen the role of the Trump White House in orchestrating efforts to overthrow the 2020 election.
Nonetheless, Biden’s Justice Department has taken unprecedented steps to provide details of Trump’s campaign to overturn the election, including waiving questions of privilege for senior officials in Trump’s Justice Department to testify. This allowed Pak, former acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen and his deputy Richard Donoghue to provide detailed testimony on Trump’s lobbying campaign.
Democratic Senate investigators had specifically asked Pak to indicate whether he had received evidence that 2,560 criminals voted in Georgia, a claim propagated by the Trump campaign that was later proven to be unfounded. Weinsheimer said the matter was beyond the scope of the committee’s investigation, which focused specifically on Trump’s lobbying campaign against Pak and other senior DOJ officials.
“You are embarking on specific investigations that have nothing to do with specific pressure on Mr. Pak, and therefore I would oppose it,” Weinsheimer said.
“It seems to me that it is inherent in understanding … if there have been particular things that [White House chief of Staff Mark Meadows], the president thought Mr. Pak’s office should investigate what they weren’t reviewing, ”Zdeb replied, according to the transcripts.
But Weinsheimer did not relent, and Pak’s personal lawyer referred to the Department of Justice.
While the DOJ has waived questions of privilege so that senior DOJ Trump officials can testify, it simultaneously seeks to protect the prerogatives of the executive branch. The Justice Department declined to comment, but Garland confirmed in an interview Monday that the DOJ is in regular contact with the White House on matters of executive privilege related to investigations into former President Trump.
But the department still maintains strict control over the specific investigative steps it may have taken to prosecute allegations of voter fraud, even though aides on both sides said the information was critical to understanding the background to the push. from Trump. The Justice Department declined to comment, but Garland confirmed in an interview Monday that the DOJ is in regular contact with the White House on matters of executive privilege related to investigations into former President Trump.
Durbin told reporters on Thursday that he was not concerned about the refusal to allow witnesses to answer certain questions because the interviews themselves were extraordinary in the first place.
“What opened the door to this investigation was the attorney general’s decision that they could not hide behind any type of privilege,” Durbin said Thursday. “They could testify to what happened. So, I think that in general the opposite is true. I think Merrick Garland’s position really opened the door for more investigations like this.
But a spokesperson for the top Republican Party on the Judiciary Committee, Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, stressed the refusal to answer some questions and said it contradicted the DOJ’s promise to be transparent.
“It is remarkable that while President Biden took the extraordinary step of forgoing executive privilege to publicize the former president’s deliberations with his senior advisers, Biden’s own Justice Department thwarted the same level of transparency when asked about documents provided by the ministry and what he did to actually investigate allegations of improprieties in the 2020 election, “Grassley spokesman Taylor Foy said.
Most of Weinsheimer’s interjections came during questioning by Republican lawyer Josh Flynn-Brown. In an interview with Rosen, Weinsheimer barred Rosen from answering questions about whether the department had opened any electoral fraud cases before the certification of the 2020 results. He also barred Pak from answering a similar question.
“I would oppose this question. It’s beyond the scope of the authorization, ”Weinsheimer said.
“I think that’s precisely in scope and a very critical question for him to answer,” Flynn-Brown replied.
In the same interview, Flynn-Brown asked Pak for examples of the types of fraud claims he received regarding the 2020 election. Weinsheimer again objects.
“I think in Donoghue’s interview I had five objections. In Rosen’s interview, I got one. I have two now. So let’s see how many I can rack up today, ”said Flynn-Brown.
“So I recommend that you stay within the scope, and I will not object to it,” Weinsheimer replied.
During the Democrats’ questioning of Pak, Weinsheimer also prevented Pak from posting a lengthy response to his work after Pak appeared to start discussing efforts to investigate threats against election workers.
“At this point,” Weinsheimer said, “I’m afraid Mr. Pak is overstepping the mark.”
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