morning, everyone. you re live in judiciary committee will begin girl and is expected to push back against gop attacks on the justice department. and gop claims i am that the doj is weaponized against donald trump. also, opening statements are underway in the trial of the president s son, hunter biden, on three felony gun charges, but there are already some developments in sayyed that courtroom will bring you and president biden is about to announce an executive order on illegal immigration, cracking down on the flow of migrants or false the southern border. the move is controversial. it s drawing fire from republicans, no surprise, but even from border patrol agents will find out why. but first let s go to paul reaches outside the courthouse in delaware where hunter biden s trial is starting. paul, you ve got some breaking news about the jury, what just happened that s right. even before opening statements got underway this morning, we already lost a juror now, this ju
the breaking news. okay. and just moments, attorney general merrick garland, who will defend the justice department before congress. these are some live pictures from inside the room. house republicans want to hold him in contempt for refusing to turn over recordings of president biden s interview with special counsel robert hur garland is expected to push back though, including on the accusation that the doj is targeting donald trump for political purposes. joining me now cnn s lauren fox on capitol hill and cnn s katelyn polantz in washington okay. so lauren, do we know what the attorney general plans to say? yeah. we are getting an early glimpse of what he s opening statement is going to be in just a few minutes. allison, he is expected to tell house republicans and house democrats on this committee that nothing he is doing is intended to go after president trump, that the people who worked at the justice department are making decisions based on the law. he s expected to say that
hold attorney general garland in contempt. so is this all a fait accompli meaning what republicans do that regardless of what he says today, they may. allison, let s take a minute to remember exactly what the clash is over that is bubbling into this contempt discussion that house republicans are having with garland. so garland is speaking more broadly about defending the justice farm, but house republicans are mad at him because they want the audio tape of joe biden sitting down with special counsel robert hur and giving an interview a lengthy interview about how he he had classified documents in his possession in an investigation that resulted in no charges. ultimately garland is telling congress, we re not giving you that audio tape. and in fact, alice and cnn is even suing for access to that audiotape. and the justice department is separately in court telling the judge, yeah, we re not giving over this audio tape we ve given a transcript of biden. we have too many fears of chillin
92,000 pages of documents in may, 25 employees available for interviews. we ve run the numbers. this is more than double the number of documents. and exponentially more witnesses. and then the trump administration s department of justice produced to this committee in four years and with respect to the actual audio recording sought by the majority the department of justice has produced full and complete transcripts of the conversations memorialized by these recordings. is that correct? it is there s been an allegation that the transcripts might have been altered in some way. is there any truth to that allegation? there s no allegation truth to that senior career official an apartment in a declaration he filed under oath stated that he had compared the audio to the transcript and that it is an accurate transcript is accurate with the exceptions of us and eyes and reputations of words like i and, and and he consulted with mr hur, the
to fiercely protect the integrity of our criminal investigations nothing will deter me from fulfilling my obligation to uphold the rule of law fulfilling that obligation includes ensuring that the justice department respects congress s important role in our democracy that is why we have gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure that the committee gets responses to its legitimate requests for information that is why i have provided the committee with special counsel hur s report by the special counsel testified for more than five hours, and why we have gone beyond precedent to provide the committee with the transcripts of the special counsel s interview with a precedent. but we have made clear that we will not provide audio recordings from which to transcripts that you already have. were created releasing the audio which she ll cooperation with a department