Rep. Van Drew to Newsmax: I 'Support' Garland Arrest

Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-N.J., told Newsmax on Friday he would "support" an "inherent contempt" vote of Attorney General Merrick Garland in the House.

In a "Dear Colleague" letter from June 24, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., noted that passing an inherent contempt charge on Garland would mean the House sergeant-at-arms would have the authority to detain Garland and bring him "to the House for questioning and compel him to produce the requested evidence," i.e., the audio tape of President Joe Biden's interview with special counsel Robert Hur about Biden's mishandling of classified documents.

Garland defied a House subpoena requesting audio recordings of Hur's interviews with Biden and Biden's ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer, plus other documents. The House then held Garland in contempt of Congress on June 12, and on Monday, it filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., to obtain the tapes and other records.

Van Drew told "The Chris Salcedo Show" that Garland "is the man who is responsible for upholding the laws of the United States of America, and he is openly and aggressively disobeying the law."

Garland is disobeying the law, Van Drew said, because Democrats have a problem because they know one of two things will happen if they release the tape.

"Either that Joe Biden did well in those audio tapes, which means then they had a special standard for him, and they didn't go forward and indict him when they should have, or the tapes will show that he was not capable of withstanding a trial in any way because he was mumbling, because he was not cognitively there, because he had problems," Van Drew said.

"And in that case, America should know that, too. You must obey the law if it happens to you, if it happened to me, we have to obey the law. Merrick Garland has to obey the law. I am all ready to go forward with inherent contempt."

• House Sues AG Garland for Biden Audio
• GOP Tension Over Rep. Luna's Push to Arrest Garland