Special counsel Robert Hur was unclear whether the Department of Justice could release the audio recordings of his five-hour interview with President Joe Biden, leaving House Republicans disgruntled. 

Hur testified before Congress on Tuesday, where Republicans and Democrats grilled him on his lengthy report released last month that documented a five-hour interview with Biden over his mishandling of classified documents. GOP lawmakers were already annoyed after the DOJ released the 250-page transcript of the interview just hours before Hur was set to testify. 

When asked by House Judiciary Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) why Congress and the public shouldn’t also have access to the audio recordings of the interview, Hur said that it wasn’t up to him to decide. 

“Chairman, what I can tell you is that my assessment that went into my conclusions that I described, my report was based not solely on the transcript, it was based on all of the evidence, including the audio recordings,” Hur said. “It is not for me to weigh into what information Congress should or should not have.”

Hur said it would be the DOJ’s decision on whether the recordings used as evidence in his investigation could be released to the public, saying his decision to leave the agency on Monday in order to testify as a private citizen does not permit him to make that decision. 

Hur was also grilled on Biden’s ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer, after Hur found in his investigations that Biden divulged classified information to Zwonitzer via audio recordings, which Zwonitzer destroyed following Hur being appointed as special counsel. 

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“The recordings had significant evidentiary value. But Zwonitzer turned over his laptop computer and external hard drive and gave consent for investigators to search the devices,” Hur wrote in the report. “As a result, FBI technicians were able to recover deleted recordings relating to Promise Me, Dad Zwonitzer kept, and did not delete or attempt to delete, near-verbatim transcripts he made of some of the recordings.”

While Hur’s report revealed several instances of the president’s memory lapses, the release of audio recordings of Biden’s interview could give Republicans more insight into Biden’s mental acuity or reveal additional information.