Politics
Inherently complicated: House Republicans consider another angle to take on Attorney General Garland
Attorney General Merrick Garland is on the clock.
Two House committees have voted to hold Garland in contempt of Congress. House Republicans aren’t pleased with Garland failing to cough up an audiotape of the transcribed interview Special Counsel Robert Hur conducted with President Biden in the classified documents case. Garland released a transcript of the interview. But Hur suggested that one of the reasons he didn’t charge Biden was because he thought a jury might view the president as an elderly forgetful man and take pity on him.
Many Republicans regularly claim the president isn’t altogether upstairs. The Wall Street Journal is now joining that chorus. GOPers are not so subtle as to their reasons for wanting the audiotape. They believe the recording could reveal a feeble chief executive who’s not fully in control of his faculties. As a result, Republicans could then use the tape to savage Biden and prove their thesis to voters ahead of the election.
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“The transcript may be accurate. But you know what? The audio would tell us so much more,” said Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., at Tuesday’s Judiciary Committee hearing with Garland.
Rep. Dan Bishop, R-N.C., told Garland the tape “reveals things about [the president’s] capacity.”
Garland won’t provide the tape. So the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees voted to hold him in contempt of Congress.
It’s not 100 percent certain the full House has the votes to hold Garland in contempt. Republicans now boast a 218 to 213 advantage in the House with the election of Rep. Vince Fong, R-Calif. Fong succeeded former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., who resigned.
But even if the House votes to hold Garland in contempt, it’s doubtful much comes of it.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland testifies before the House Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. (Getty Images)
Lawmakers may refer a contempt of Congress citation for noncompliance with subpoenas for documents or testimony to the Justice Department for prosecution. In short, the Justice Department run by Garland is not going to prosecute its own attorney general.
So, Republicans are stuck.
That’s where “inherent contempt” comes in.
Inherent contempt is an authority which Congress may deploy on its own without relying on another branch of government. In other words, Congress may vote to hold someone in contempt for failing to provide information — and inherently use its own powers to discipline, arrest or hold someone for running afoul of the House or Senate.
Lawmakers of both parties have spoken off and on for years about leaning on inherent contempt to get their way. But no one has really considered it as a legitimate option for the first time in nine decades until recently.
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Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., says she will introduce a resolution of inherent contempt — 10 days after the House votes on “regular” contempt for Garland. The idea is that the Justice Department won’t prosecute Garland, so Congress will take matters into its own hands.
Of course, it’s impossible to know if the House would ever command the requisite votes for an inherent contempt resolution — especially since “customary” contempt is dicey, too. But let’s explore inherent contempt for a moment and examine how it works.
Congress formerly leaned on inherent contempt in the early days of the republic. In fact, Congress voted to hold various newspaper publishers in contempt in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In 1927, a Senate panel voted to approve a warrant for a witness who failed to comply with a subpoena. But a court ruled that the Senate overstepped its bounds in that case.
Congress last used inherent contempt in 1934. A Commerce Department official refused to comply with a congressional subpoena for documents related to an airmail scandal. So Congress held the official in contempt.
President Biden delivers remarks on an executive order limiting asylum in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., in Tuesday. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
What did that involve?
After the House voted, it dispatched its House Sergeant at Arms to arrest the official. The House then held the official at the Willard Hotel — a posh establishment in downtown Washington close to the White House — for a week and a half.
Inherent contempt is inherently intriguing — but also inherently chaotic. Could one imagine the scene if the House approved an inherent contempt resolution for Garland? Would House Sergeant at Arms Bill McFarland and a squadron of his deputies — or U.S. Capitol Police officers — just surface at Garland’s home one day or the Justice Department and demand that the attorney general come with them? How would Garland’s protective detail respond? Would this be a cursory visit, perhaps informing Garland that he’s been held in inherent contempt of Congress? Or does this devolve into a tense exchange between the legislative and executive branches?
And even if Garland does come with McFarland to Capitol Hill, does the House continue to hold him? Pray tell, where? Does Garland just come immediately to the Capitol for an appearance with the Oversight and Judiciary Committees?
No one is quite sure. Even Luna, the sponsor of the measure.
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“Ideally, the attorney general would do the right thing and come present us representatives with information that we’ve been asking for. But that’s up to him to decide whether it’s above the law,” said Luna.
Yours truly asked what the plan was, since inherent contempt would represent such a significant escalation involving a potential standoff between two branches of government.
“I think it hasn’t been done in a while. So we’ll see how it unfolds,” said Luna.
I pressed Luna whether there might be a standoff between McFarland and Garland.
“I don’t think they ever anticipated that we would bring this forward,” replied Luna. “This is absolutely something that can be done.”
But no one knows how.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland testifies before the House Judiciary Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
A senior House security official tells Fox there has been some mulling of this. But everyone is just waiting to see what unfolds.
However, two things must happen first. The House must vote to hold Garland in contempt. And it would then vote to hold him in inherent contempt. And so far, the House hasn’t demonstrated it has the votes for “regular” contempt.
“It would be extraordinary to have the Sergeant at Arms go to [Garland’s] office. His house,” I pointed out to Luna.
“We’re hoping that it doesn’t get to that,” answered the Florida Republican.
But as far as one can tell, there isn’t a plan. Inherent contempt is inherently complicated. Inherently messy. And inherently tumultuous.
When President-elect Donald J. Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Saturday to pressure him on a cease-fire deal in Gaza, there was someone on the speakerphone: Brett H. McGurk, President Biden’s longtime Mideast negotiator.
It was a vivid example of cooperation between two men representing bitter political rivals whose relationship has been best described as poisonous. Rarely if ever have teams of current and new presidents of different parties worked together at such a high-stakes moment, with the fate of American lives and the future of a devastating war hanging in the balance.
Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden publicly claimed credit for the breakthrough.
“This EPIC ceasefire agreement could have only happened as a result of our Historic Victory in November,” Mr. Trump wrote on his social media site even before the deal was formally announced in the Middle East.
At the White House, Mr. Biden told reporters that his administration had worked tirelessly for months to convince the two sides to halt the fighting. He called it “one of the toughest negotiations I’ve ever experienced” and gave credit to “an extraordinary team of American diplomats who have worked nonstop for months to get this done.”
As he left the room, a reporter asked Mr. Biden, “Who gets credit for this, Mr. President, you or Trump?” Mr. Biden stopped, turned around and smiled.
“Is that a joke?” he asked.
But despite the tension between the current president and the next one, their representatives in the Middle East described a cooperative working relationship in the weeks since Election Day.
“Brett is in the lead,” Mr. Witkoff said last week at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s club in Florida, describing the working relationship. That description was accurate by all accounts, even if it did not match what Mr. Trump had said moments before in one of several statements describing his negotiators as critical players.
In fact, Mr. Trump’s threat that “all hell” would break loose if no deal was reached before his inauguration on Monday might have helped motivate Hamas’s leadership to make final decisions. But people familiar with the negotiations said the announcement on Wednesday of a deal to temporarily end hostilities in Gaza was the result of months of work by Mr. McGurk in the Middle East, capped off by several weeks of carefully coordinated efforts by Mr. Witkoff.
Mr. Witkoff, 67, a blunt real estate investor from the Bronx, has largely planted himself in Qatar for the negotiations, knowing that whatever Mr. McGurk negotiated, he would have to execute. In fact, the 33 hostages who will be released under the cease-fire deal may not see freedom until Inauguration Day or after. The cease-fire would expire six weeks later, unless Phase 2 of the agreement kicks in.
By design, the goal was to send a unified message that the fighting must end and the hostages held by Hamas must be released. One person familiar with the negotiations, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the discussions, said Mr. McGurk was more involved in hammering out details of the agreement, while Mr. Witkoff’s role was to make clear that Mr. Trump wanted a deal by the time he is inaugurated.
The president-elect has also been setting some early parameters in his dealings with Mr. Netanyahu — who, for all his support of Mr. Trump in the election, was perceived by the Trump camp as dragging his feet on a deal. Mr. Witkoff flew to to Israel from Doha on Saturday — despite the Sabbath — to underscore the message that Mr. Netanyahu had to get on board.
Mr. Witkoff’s work, including the meeting with Mr. Netanyahu, helped Mr. McGurk and the Biden administration to put pressure on both sides during the negotiation, according to the person familiar with the talks.
It was not at all clear that such an arrangement would work in the days immediately after Mr. Trump won a second term.
He and Mr. Biden have barely talked in recent weeks, their already acrimonious relationship weighed down by the Trump team’s determination to clean out the White House career staff and the Biden team issuing last-minute orders to box in the new administration.
In his remarks on Wednesday, Mr. Biden acknowledged some level of cooperation and respect between their aides.
“This deal was developed and negotiated under my administration, but its terms will be implemented for the most part by the next administration,” Mr. Biden told reporters. “In these past few days, we’ve been speaking as one team.”
But he did not give any more credit to Mr. Trump for helping the effort. For his part, the president-elect said he was “thrilled” that the American hostages would be released, but he did not mention Mr. Biden or the work of the current administration.
“We have achieved so much without even being in the White House,” Mr. Trump wrote. “Just imagine all of the wonderful things that will happen when I return to the White House, and my Administration is fully confirmed, so they can secure more Victories for the United States!”
Both leaders left it to staff members to describe the way they had worked together on the Gaza negotiations.
A person familiar with that effort said a close partnership between Mr. McGurk and Mr. Witkoff was part of an “incredibly effective” process by which the Biden administration finalized a deal that the Trump administration would have to oversee.
That cooperation began soon after Mr. Trump won the election and named Mr. Witkoff to be his envoy to the region. Biden administration officials have said they believe the momentum for a deal began before that, when Mr. Biden helped broker a separate agreement to end fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. That isolated Hamas and helped persuade the group that a cease-fire was in its interests, according to Biden officials.
Politics
Stephen Miller preps House Republicans for Trump's immigration overhaul in closed-door meeting
President-elect Trump’s top aide on immigration and the border spoke with House Republicans during a roughly hour-long meeting Wednesday.
Lawmakers who left the room hailed Stephen Miller, who was tapped to be U.S. Homeland Security adviser in the new Trump administration, as a brilliant policy mind.
Two sources present for the discussions told Fox News Digital Miller talked about the need to scale up the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) workforce, which is noteworthy given Trump’s promise to execute mass deportations when he returns to office.
Miller also discussed ways to cut federal funds going toward sanctuary cities and states, a cash flow that Republicans had previously promised to target if they were to control the levers of power in Washington.
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Trump adviser Stephen Miller addressed a group of House Republicans Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025. (Getty Images)
The strategy meeting comes as congressional Republicans are preparing for a massive conservative policy overhaul through the budget reconciliation process. By lowering the threshold for passage in the Senate from 60 votes to 51, reconciliation allows the party controlling Congress and the White House to pass broad policy changes — provided they deal with budgetary and other fiscal matters.
The sources told Fox News Digital Miller’s portion of the meeting partly focused on what border and immigration policies could go into a reconciliation package and what kind of funding Congress would need to appropriate.
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The sources said Miller told Republicans the incoming Trump administration understood the president-elect’s border and immigration goals were “probably not going to get a lot” of Democratic votes and that “those more controversial things would need to be in reconciliation.” More bipartisan initiatives could be passed during the regular process, the sources added.
A House GOP lawmaker told Fox News Digital of an understanding that Congress would follow Trump’s lead.
“I think we’re going to see a slew of executive orders early, and that is going to be helpful to separate from what we have to do legislatively,” the lawmaker said.
One source in the room said Miller emphasized the importance of messaging, adding that “nothing matters if we don’t get our message out to the American people.”
President-elect Trump has promised to carry out mass deportations. (Donald Trump/Truth Social)
Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., told Fox News Digital Miller discussed “low-hanging fruit” that Trump could tackle by executive order, mentioning “deportation” as a possibility.
“Tax stuff, that’s going to take some time,” Norman said.
Rep. Mark Alford, R-Mo., declined to go into specifics about the meeting but told Fox News Digital the discussion focused on “illegal immigration and how that’s going to be curbed … to bring commonsense solutions to the program.”
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“I had a couple of questions about the cost to American taxpayers if we don’t repatriate some 12 million illegal aliens who the Biden administration has let into our country,” Alford said.
Miller declined to answer reporters’ questions when he left the room.
He was invited to address the Republican Study Committee led by Rep. August Pfluger, R-Texas, the House GOP’s largest caucus, which acts as a conservative think tank of sorts for the rest of the House Republican Conference.
House GOP leaders like Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., were not in attendance, nor were they expected.
Rep. Mark Alford said he asked about the cost to taxpayers to keep millions of illegal immigrants in the country. (Getty Images)
Rep. Kevin Hern, R-Okla., the group’s previous chairman, said there was “nothing new” said during the meeting, adding it was an opportunity for Trump’s aides to address the House GOP.
Trump and his aides have already paid heavy attention to congressional Republicans.
Several of his incoming White House aides are in regular contact with top GOP lawmakers. Trump personally invited several groups of House Republicans to Mar-a-Lago last weekend.
WASHINGTON — Thanks to the internet and smartphones, children today have instant access to vast amounts of online pornography, much of it graphic, violent and degrading, Texas state attorneys told the Supreme Court on Wednesday.
They urged justices to restore the rules of an earlier era, when X-rated theaters and bookstores had an adults-only policy.
Last year, Texas enacted an age-verification law that requires pornographic websites to confirm their users are 18 or older.
Lawyers for 23 other Republican-led states joined in support of Texas, saying they have or plan to adopt similar measures.
The court’s conservative justices signaled they are prepared to uphold these new laws.
They noted that age-verification rules are now common for online gambling and for buying alcohol or tobacco online.
But more importantly, they pointed to the dramatic change in technology and the easy availability of hardcore pornography.
We are “in an entirely different era,” said Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. “The technological access to pornography has exploded.”
He said that warrants reconsidering rulings from decades past that invoked the 1st Amendment to strike down anti-pornography measures.
In one such ruling, the court in 2004 said parents and librarians could use filtering software to protect children from pornography.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett said parents have long known that “filtering” software is not effective in protecting children. “Kids can get online porn through gaming systems, tablets, phones and computers,” she said. “I can say from personal experience … content filtering isn’t working.”
In the past, she said the court had no problem upholding laws that prevent bookstores from selling sexually explicit books or magazine to children or teens.
She questioned why online porn should be treated differently.
Washington attorney Derek Shaffer, who represented the adult entertainment industry that challenged the Texas law on 1st Amendment grounds, argued the Texas law could have a “chilling effect” on adult customers who may be leery of providing personal information needed to verify age and identity.
Texas state solicitor Aaron Nielsen said the new age-verification systems allow customers to confirm their age online without directly contacting a particular website.
“Age verification is simple, safe and common,” he said.
The justices and the attorneys spent most of their time on what free speech standard should apply to such a law.
In the past, the court said anti-pornography laws must be viewed with “strict scrutiny.” Usually, that resulted in narrowing or striking down such laws.
By contrast, the 5th Circuit Court allowed the Texas law to take effect because it was a “rational” means of protecting children.
Several of the justices said they would vote to uphold the Texas law, but they may also agree to send it back to the 5th Circuit Court for a second hearing.
Republican-led states pointed to a growing pornography problem.
“The average child is exposed to internet pornography while still in elementary school,” wrote state attorneys for Ohio and Indiana. “Pornography websites receive more traffic in the U.S. than social media platforms Instagram, TikTok, Netflix, and Pinterest combined.”
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