White House counsel accuses Jordan of harassment over possible contempt order for Biden ghost writer

The White House accused House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan on Tuesday of harassing a private citizen, as the committee mulls a contempt referral for the president's ghost writer who failed to comply with a Congressional subpoena.

The House Judiciary committee is expected to discuss whether to hold President Joe Biden's ghost writer Mark Zwonitzer in contempt of Congress on Thursday, after Zwonitzer refused to turn over his own audio recordings and notes from his interviews with the president.

White House Counsel Edward Siskel told Jordan in a letter that the actions of the committee amounted to harassment and "intimidation" of a private citizen, and accused the committee of political weaponization. 

“Putting a private citizen in your political crosshairs and threatening him with criminal prosecution, simply because you refuse to engage with the Executive Branch, is out of bounds,” Siskel wrote in a letter reported by The Hill. “If you were sincerely interested in examining the handling of classified information, you would engage with the Executive Branch, not a private citizen with no authority related to classified information.”

Siskel also noted the personal aspect of the recordings, which included passages from Biden's personal notebooks. Siskel said the Supreme Court determined that Congress could not attempt to secure personal information on sitting presidents, after Congress tried to obtain former President Donald Trump's tax records.

The committee's request for Zwonitzer's recordings and notes comes after special counsel Robert Hur's report indicated that Biden could have read parts of his personal notebooks that contained classified information.

“Based on the information in Special Counsel Hur’s report, President Biden’s assertion that he never shared classified information with you appears to be false,” Jordan wrote to Zwonitzer in February.

Zwonitzer has pushed back on the committee's request, claiming that he turned all information regarding the interviews over to the Justice Department, and has deleted the recordings. 

“The Department continues to have possession, custody, and control of those files,” Zwonitzer’s attorneys wrote to the committee in a May.

Although Hur mentioned Zwonitzer's interviews in his final report on Biden's handling of classified documents, he opted not to prosecute the ghostwriter, claiming “the evidence falls short of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Zwonitzer intended to impede an investigation.” 

Misty Severi is an evening news reporter for Just the News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.