House Republicans have pushed Attorney General Merrick Garland to release the tapes of the interviews and threatened to hold him in contempt of Congress if he didn’t. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
"Executive privilege is designed to respect constitutional separation of powers and to enable a president to engage in candid conversations with his top advisers in order to form judgments and reach decisions," John Malcolm of the Heritage Foundation and a former federal prosecutor told Fox News Digital.
"[It] is not designed to hide information that may prove to be embarrassing to a president or some other government official or operation," Malcolm said. He noted that the transcript of the entire interview has already been released.
"Hence, there is no national security or deliberative process reason for not disclosing the recordings of the interview. The only conceivable reason why President Biden would want to prevent the recordings from being disclosed is because he is worried about the public will react to his demeanor and recall when answering Special Counsel Hur’s questions, especially since serious questions have already been raised about his mental acuity and his ability to serve effectively as our president," he said.
"If he has some other, legitimate reason for withholding that information — and it is hard to fathom what that might be — he needs to say what it is," Malcolm added.
Hur led the investigation into Biden's handling of classified documents following his departure as vice president under the Obama administration. Hur announced in February that he would not recommend criminal charges against Biden for possessing classified materials after his vice presidency, saying Biden is "a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory."
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Hur announced in February that he would not recommend criminal charges against President Biden for possessing classified materials following his departure as vice president under the Obama administration. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
Former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy told Fox News Digital in an interview that Biden’s privilege assertion is "crude politics."
"They are trying to manufacture a legal cover for something that's strictly a political decision. The tape would be very embarrassing for Biden. So he's stonewalling on it, and they're trying to wrap a legal bow around it, but there's no legal reason for withholding the recording," McCarthy said, adding that, should Republicans take the matter to court, they likely wouldn’t succeed due to the privilege assertions.
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"What Biden has obviously decided is that it would be a lot more damaging to release the tape than it would be to take the hit that he's taking for withholding it," McCarthy said.
"It’s just crude politics. It's nothing more than that," he said.
Fox News Digital reached out to the White House and DOJ for comment.
Brianna Herlihy is a politics writer for Fox News Digital.
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