In a report on why he declined to prosecute Biden, Hur cited the president’s failing memory and confused answers he’d given during an interview he’d done with the special counsel.

Hur’s report set off a wave of speculation that Biden’s mental faculties were in serious decline. Republicans have since been clamoring for full recordings of Biden’s interview with Hur to be released.

Garland did make transcripts of the interview available. But on the last day he had to comply with a House subpoena for audio recordings of that interview, the White House declined to give up the recordings, citing executive privilege, reported the Associated Press.

Republicans, in voting to hold Garland in contempt, argued that a cover-up was afoot.

“There’s only one reason why the attorney general would do that. He doesn’t want us to hear it. That’s why,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R–Texas) on the House floor Wednesday, reported Fox News. “And there’s really only two reasons why that would be the case—either the transcript doesn’t match the audio, or the audio is so bad that he doesn’t want us to hear it.”

Garland, for his part, has dismissed the whole affair as a partisan witch hunt.

“It is deeply disappointing that this House of Representatives has turned a serious congressional authority into a partisan weapon. Today’s vote disregards the constitutional separation of powers, the Justice Department’s need to protect its investigations, and the substantial amount of information we have provided to the Committees,” he said in a statement.

An interest rate cut? Yesterday’s relatively mild inflation report raised the hopes of the nation’s borrowers that interest rates too might begin to fall. The Federal Reserve has repeatedly hiked interest rates over the past two years to try to get stubbornly high inflation in check, raising the costs of credit across the economy.

With inflation falling, analysts have been predicting that the central bank might cut rates. Yet Fed Chairman Jerome Powell gave rate-cutting enthusiasts only modest cause for optimism.

“We’ve made pretty good progress on inflation,” said Powell yesterday according to The Wall Street Journal, calling Wednesday’s report “a step in the right direction…but you don’t want to be too motivated by any single data point.”

At their policy meeting yesterday, Federal Reserve officials kept interest rates the same for the time being. They also scheduled only a single interest rate cut this year.

Inflation staying up? Given the clamor to cut interest rates, the question going forward is whether the Fed will continue to try to bring inflation back down to its annual 2 percent target (annual inflation is 3.3 percent right now). In remarks yesterday, Powell gave some indication that he and the Fed might tolerate an inflation rate higher than 2 percent.

The Fed chairman said that if Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) inflation was closer to 3 percent, that was “a good place.”