The House Rules Committee on Tuesday debated the merits of holding Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress for refusing to hand over audio recordings of President Joe Biden's interview with the special counsel who probed his handling of classified documents.

The Republican-majority committee is expected to vote later on Tuesday night on resolutions to hold Garland in contempt for defying subpoenas for the recording from the House Oversight and Judiciary committees. If passed, the resolution will go to the full House for a vote this week, where the GOP holds a slim advantage.

“The executive branch and its agencies, including the Department of Justice, are not above Congress's right to oversee those agencies. We, as members of the House of Representatives, have a duty to ensure congressional subpoenas are fully complied with by those who received them,” Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., said during Tuesday’s hearing. “If the attorney general chooses to defy Congress and not produce the audio recording, he must face the consequences of his actions.”

Garland has argued that Congress already has transcripts of the interview and Biden, on Garland’s recommendation, asserted executive privilege to block the release of the audio. Biden’s White House counsel contended last month that Republicans only want the tape “to chop them up, distort them, and use them for partisan political purposes.”

Democrats at the hearing made similar cases. Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said the Department of Justice under Garland had already complied with many of House Republicans’ demands, including allowing Special Counsel Robert Hur to testify after opting not to prosecute Biden, as well as sharing DOJ correspondence with Biden’s lawyers, the transcript of Biden’s five-hour interview with Hur and the transcript of Biden’s ghostwriter’s sit-down with investigators.

“Attorney General Garland and the Department of Justice have cooperated substantially, materially and fully with every single one of the requests bombarding his office in this bad faith, madcap, endless impeachment investigation,” Raskin said. “Republicans have responded to Garland’s striking, good faith cooperation by trying to hold the attorney general in contempt because they say they do not want to read the president's answers in the interview. They want to listen to the book on tape.”

Republicans, including Comer, said they can’t trust that the DOJ left the transcripts unaltered. Rules Committee Chair Chair Michael Burgess, R-Texas, even baselessly speculated on Tuesday the tapes may have been destroyed, a destruction of evidence that would amount to a federal crime and a political crisis of Nixonian proportions. Raskin and the Democrats say these arguments are a ploy to get the audio to publicize clips of Biden fumbling over his words during an election year.

“They want to pour over five hours of President Biden's taped interview to search not for an impeachable offense — because that doesn't exist at this point — for a verbal mistake, like a mispronounced name, that they can turn into a political TV attack ad in the presidential campaign,” Raskin said.

New York Rep. Jerry Nadler, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, also echoed a point previously made by Garland that releasing the recording could create a precedent that would have a “chilling effect” on future investigations. The Justice Department has argued witnesses might be less likely to cooperate if they know their interviews might be heard by the public. And in a recent court filing, it raised concerns that releasing the audio could spur deepfakes and disinformation that trick Americans.

Writing for the Washington Post on Tuesday, Garland pushed back on attacks on the DOJ, though he did not specifically address the criminal contempt discussions in Congress. He wrote that “continued unfounded attacks against the Justice Department’s employees are dangerous for people’s safety.” Garland and his department have been frequent subjects of conspiracy theories and false claims by Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, in response to criminal investigations into Trump being handled by an independent special counsel and local district attorneys.

And earlier this month, testifying before the House Judiciary Committee, Garland described the GOP effort to hold him in contempt as the latest in “a long line of attacks" on the Justice Department." Those attacks “have not, and they will not” influence the department's decision making, he said. 

“I will not be intimidated,” Garland said. “And the Justice Department will not be intimidated. We will continue to do our jobs free from political influence. And we will not back down from defending our democracy.”

Republicans used the House Judiciary Committee hearing to push the claim that Biden has weaponized the department to go after Trump. The former president and presumptive Republican presidential nominee — who is charged in two criminal cases brought by the Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith — has cast himself as the victim of a politically motivated legal system as he vies to reclaim the White House in November.

Since his conviction in his New York criminal hush-money trial late last month, Trump and his supporters have escalated their attacks on the criminal justice system, slamming prosecutors, the judge and the jury. Trump and his allies have suggested the case brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a state-level prosecutor, was orchestrated by Biden.

“What the American people are sick of is how pathetic this House of Representatives has become. This is a distraction from the fact that the Republican nominee for president is a convicted felon,” House Rules Committee Ranking Member Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said. “They are irresponsibly attacking the DOJ making absurd claims that it is being weaponized. These contempt resolutions represent more of those attacks.”

McGovern argued that the conviction of Hunter Biden, the president’s son, earlier on Tuesday for three federal gun charges was evidence the Justice Department was not corrupt and that the relatively muted reaction by Biden and other Democrats was more appropriate than Republicans' reaction to Trump's legal woes.

“Do Republicans still believe that President Biden is weaponizing the justice system? Because if he is, he’s sure doing a lousy job,” McGovern added. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.