Photo of the Congressman and Ms. Owens provided by the office of Congressman Chris Deluzio   

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, Congressman Chris Deluzio welcomed the winner of the Pennsylvania 17th Congressional District Art Competition to his office in Washington. Each spring, the House of Representatives sponsors a visual art competition for high school students for which young people from across the nation are invited to showcase their art and highlight their home congressional districts.

This year, Fox Chapel Area High School rising Junior, Mira Owens, took home first place in Congressman Deluzio’s competition. Her abstract painting, “JOY,” contains imaginative depictions of the artist’s daily life in Western Pennsylvania. She resides in Indiana Township.

“It was great to visit with Mira Owens in Washington today and celebrate her outstanding artistic talent,” said Congressman Deluzio. “The creative energy of the young artists in Western PA is inspiring, and I am honored to represent such creative and imaginative constituents like Mira. I can’t wait to see all they accomplish!”

Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks during a news conference at the Department of Justice headquarters in Washington, Thursday, June 27, 2024. The Justice Department has charged nearly 200 people in a sweeping crackdown on health care fraud schemes nationwide with false claims topping $2.7 billion. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans on Monday filed a lawsuit against Attorney General Merrick Garland for the audio recording of President Joe Biden’s interview with a special counsel in his classified documents case, asking the courts to enforce their subpoena and reject the White House’s effort to withhold the materials from Congress.

The lawsuit filed by the House Judiciary Committee marks Republicans’ latest broadside against the Justice Department as partisan conflict over the rule of law animates the 2024 presidential campaign. The legal action comes weeks after the White House blocked Garland from releasing the audio recording to Congress by asserting executive privilege.

Republicans in the House responded by voting to make Garland the third attorney general in U.S. history to be held in contempt of Congress. But the Justice Department refused to take up the contempt referral, citing the agency’s “longstanding position and uniform practice” to not prosecute officials who don’t comply with subpoenas because of a president’s claim of executive privilege.

The lawsuit states that Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., made a “last-ditch effort” last week to Garland to resolve the issue without taking legal action but the attorney general referred the Republicans to the White House, which rebuffed the “effort to find a solution to this impasse.”

Garland has defended the Justice Department, saying officials have gone to extraordinary lengths to provide information to the committees about special counsel Robert Hur’s classified documents investigation, including a transcript of Biden’s interview with him.

The congressional inquiry began with the release of Hur’s report in February, which found evidence that Biden, a Democrat, willfully retained and shared highly classified information when he was a private citizen. Yet the special counsel concluded that criminal charges were not warranted.

Republicans, incensed by Hur’s decision, issued a subpoena for audio of his interviews with Biden during the spring. But the Justice Department turned over only some of the records, leaving out audio of the interview with the president.

“The audio recordings, not the cold transcripts, are the best available evidence of how President Biden presented himself during the interview,” the lawsuit reads. “The Committee thus needs those recordings to assess the Special Counsel’s characterization of the President, which he and White House lawyers have forcefully disputed, and ultimate recommendation that President Biden should not be prosecuted.”

On the last day to comply with the Republicans’ subpoena for the audio, the White House blocked the release by invoking executive privilege. It said that Republicans in Congress only wanted the recordings “to chop them up” and use them for political purposes.

But Republicans maintain that access to both the audio recordings and the transcripts are warranted to determine if legislative reforms need to be put in place for the storage, handling and disclosure of sensitive documents by members of the executive branch. Prolonging the investigation also keeps attention on parts of Hur’s report that were politically damaging to Biden as he seeks reelection against former President Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee, in November.

Beyond the bitingly critical assessment of Biden’s handling of sensitive government records, Hur offered unflattering characterizations of the Democratic president’s memory in his report, sparking fresh questions about his competency and age that cut at voters’ most deep-seated concerns about the 81-year-old seeking a second term.

“We need the audio recordings and the transcripts,” Rep. Jim Jordan, the GOP chair of the House Judiciary Committee, said during a hearing Thursday. “Put simply, they are the best evidence of the president’s mental state.”

Executive privilege gives presidents the right to keep information from the courts, Congress and the public to protect the confidentiality of decision-making, though it can be challenged in court. Administrations of both major political parties have long held the position that officials who assert a president’s claim of executive privilege can’t be prosecuted for contempt of Congress, a Justice Department official told Republicans last month.

Assistant Attorney General Carlos Felipe Uriarte cited a committee’s decision in 2008 to back down from a contempt effort after President George W. Bush asserted executive privilege to keep Congress from getting records involving Vice President Dick Cheney.

The White House and congressional Democrats have slammed Republicans’ motives for pursuing contempt and dismissed their efforts to obtain the audio as purely political. They also pointed out that Jordan defied his own congressional subpoena in the last session.

It’s unclear how the lawsuit against Garland will play out. Courts have not had much to say about executive privilege. But in the 1974 case over President Richard Nixon’s refusal to release Oval Office recordings as part of t he Watergate investigation, the Supreme Court held that the privilege is not absolute. In other words, the case for turning over documents or allowing testimony may be more compelling than arguments for withholding them. In that context, the court ruled 8-0 that Nixon had to turn over the tapes.

When it came to the Watergate tapes, the Supreme Court said it had the final word, and lower courts have occasionally weighed in to resolve other disputes. But courts also have made clear they prefer that the White House and Congress resolve their disagreements without judicial intervention, when possible.

FILE – Rioters loyal to President Donald Trump rally at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Jan. 6, 2021. Retired NASCAR driver Tighe Scott, his adult son and two other Pennsylvania men are facing felony charges stemming from confrontations with police during the Jan. 6, 2021, siege on the U.S. Capitol. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Friday limited a federal obstruction law that has been used to charge hundreds of Capitol riot defendants as well as former President Donald Trump.

The justices ruled 6-3 that the charge of obstructing an official proceeding, enacted in 2002 in response to the financial scandal that brought down Enron Corp., must include proof that defendants tried to tamper with or destroy documents. Only some of the people who violently attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, fall into that category.

The overwhelming majority of the approximately 1,000 people who have been convicted of or pleaded guilty to Capitol riot-related federal crimes were not charged with obstruction and will not be affected by the outcome.

Still, the decision is likely to be used as fodder for claims by Trump and his Republican allies that the Justice Department has treated the Capitol riot defendants unfairly.

It’s unclear how the court’s decision will affect the case against Trump in Washington, which includes charges other than obstruction. Special counsel Jack Smith has said the charges faced by the former president would not be affected.

Trump’s case is on hold while the Supreme Court considers a separate case in which Trump is claiming immunity from prosecution. A decision is expected on Monday.

Under the ruling issued Friday, dozens of defendants could seek new sentences, ask to withdraw guilty pleas, or have charges dropped. Most defendants convicted of obstruction were also convicted of another felony so their sentence may not be significantly impacted – if at all.

The high court returned the case of former Pennsylvania police officer Joseph Fischer to a lower court to determine if Fischer could be charged with obstruction. Fischer has been indicted for his role in disrupting Congress’ certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory over Trump.

Fischer is among about 350 people who have been charged with obstruction. Some pleaded guilty to — or were convicted of — lesser charges.

Republicans, who have cast the Jan. 6 defendants as victims of political persecution, are certain to seize on the ruling to argue the rioters have been unfairly prosecuted by the Justice Department. Trump has embraced Jan. 6 defendants on the campaign trial, and floated pardons for the rioters if he wins in November.

Trump, speaking at a rally in Chesapeake, Virginia, described the decision as a “great thing.”

“Free the J6 hostages now,” he said. “They should free them now for what they’ve gone through. They’ve been waiting for this decision for a long time. They’ve been waiting for a long time. And that was a great answer. That is a great thing for people that have been so horribly treated. ”

It’s also likely to slow down cases in a court already clogged with Jan. 6 defendants as judges are forced to grapple with how to apply the ruling.

“It’s going to be a big mess,” said Randall Eliason, a professor at George Washington University Law School and former federal prosecutor in Washington.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the court’s opinion, joined by conservative Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas, and by liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a former federal public defender who also wrote a separate opinion.

Reading the obstruction statute broadly “would also criminalize a broad swath of prosaic conduct, exposing activists and lobbyists to decades in prison,” Roberts wrote.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett dissented, along with Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor.

Barrett, one of three justices appointed by Trump, wrote that the law clearly encompasses the events of Jan. 6. “The riot forced Congress to suspend the proceeding, delaying it for several hours,” she wrote.

She said her colleagues in the majority did “textual backflips to find some way — any way — to narrow the reach” of the obstruction law.

Roberts, Jackson and Barrett made strikingly different word choices in their opinions. While Roberts described the attack as a “breach of the Capitol,” Barrett described the events as a riot and the participants as rioters. Jackson wrote that “an angry mob stormed the United States Capitol.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland said he was disappointed with the decision, which he said “limits an important federal statute.” Still, Garland said the cases against the “vast majority” of people charged in the attack won’t be affected.

“January 6 was an unprecedented attack on the cornerstone of our system of government — the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next,” he said. “We will continue to use all available tools to hold accountable those criminally responsible for the January 6 attack on our democracy.”

Roughly 170 Capitol insurrection defendants have been convicted of obstructing or conspiring to obstruct the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress, including the leaders of two far-right extremist groups, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers. A number of defendants have had their sentencings delayed until after the justices rule on the matter.

Some rioters have even won early release from prison while the appeal was pending over concerns that they might end up serving longer than they should have if the Supreme Court ruled against the Justice Department. They include Kevin Seefried, a Delaware man who threatened a Black police officer with a pole attached to a Confederate battle flag as he stormed the Capitol. Seefried was sentenced last year to three years behind bars, but a judge recently ordered that he be released one year into his prison term while awaiting the Supreme Court’s ruling.

Seventeen of the 18 trial judges who have weighed in have allowed the charge to stand. Among them, U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich, a Trump appointee, wrote that “statutes often reach beyond the principal evil that animated them.”

But U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, another Trump appointee, dismissed the charge against Fischer and two other defendants, writing that prosecutors went too far. A divided panel of the federal appeals court in Washington reinstated the charge before the Supreme Court agreed to take up the case.

Alito and Thomas rejected calls that they step aside from the Jan. 6 case because of questions raised about their impartiality.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, which has handled Jan. 6 prosecutions, said no one who has been convicted of or charged with obstruction will be completely cleared because of the ruling. Every defendant also has other felony or misdemeanor charges, or both, prosecutors said.

For around 50 people who were convicted, obstruction was the only felony count, prosecutors said. Of those, roughly two dozen who still are serving their sentence are most likely to be affected by the ruling.

More than 1,400 people have been charged with Capitol riot-related federal crimes.

UNION CITY, Pa. (AP) — A man was killed when some fireworks exploded at his Pennsylvania home, state police said.

Michael Cross, 55, of Union City, was working in his garage when the blast occurred around 10:15 a.m. Sunday in the Erie County community. Neighbors soon arrived and helped get Cross away from the flames, but he was pronounced dead at a hospital a short time later.

No other injuries were reported. The Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is among the agencies involved in the ongoing investigation into the blast.