Mike Johnson vs. Merrick Garland, contempt of Congress edition

Before he became the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson was an attorney working in private practice. He also worked for the Alliance Defending Freedom. The point is that he knows his way around the U.S. legal system. That's worth noting since Speaker Johnson announced that he'd "move in federal court to enforce a subpoena against Attorney General Merrick Garland to obtain audio recordings of President Joe Biden, after the Justice Department declined to act on the House’s contempt referral."

The DOJ will lose this fight because they're carrying the light stick in this fight. First, the DOJ replied in its letter that "Consistent with this longstanding position and uniform practice, the Department has determined that the responses by Attorney General Garland to the subpoenas issued by the Committees did not constitute a crime, and accordingly the Department will not bring the congressional contempt citation before a grand jury or take any other action to prosecute the Attorney General."

This isn't just an ordinary subpoena. This subpoena is part of House's impeachment inquiry of Joe Biden. It's worth noting that Michael Conway, "who served as counsel on the House judiciary committee during the Watergate investigation," wrote a memo that said this:

The Supreme Court has contrasted the broad scope of the inquiry power of the House in impeachment proceedings with its more confined scope in legislative investigations. From the beginning of the Federal Government, presidents have stated that in an impeachment inquiry the Executive Branch could be required to produce papers that it might with‐hold in a legislative investigation.

Impeachment means that the executive branch can't hide behind things like executive privilege. If they could hide behind such privileges, there's no doubt that's what they'd use to thwart impeachment investigations. The DOJ isn't being 100% honest with its statement. Impeachment investigations are investigations into something that's bigger than a criminal investigation. Impeachment inquiries are about investigating "bribery, treason, high crimes and misdemeanors." It's about how a senator took classified material out of a SCIF, which is definitely illegal, then passed some of those contents onto his ghost writer, who then wrote a book that Biden got paid $8,000,000 for. As for not turning over the audiotape not being a crime, that's silly. It's called obstruction of justice:

Merrick Garland has been Joe Biden's wingman just like Eric Holder was Obama's wingman. Just once, I'd like to find an AG that's faithful to the laws of this nation instead of being faithful to his boss.