The Justice Department said in a letter to the chairmen of the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees on Thursday that the recordings would not be made public.
It said it would invoke executive privilege, a legal doctrine that protects certain executive branch records from being made public.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, who leads the department, also criticized House Republicans for “an unprecedented series of, frankly, and baseless attacks” on the Justice Department.
Mr. Garland’s move could be seen as contempt of Congress.
He told Biden in a letter Wednesday that legal counsel had determined the tapes “fall within the scope of executive privilege,” setting the stage for the White House to withhold them.
Garland noted that the president fully cooperated with the criminal investigation and voluntarily submitted to a five-hour interview with Hull’s team.
On Thursday morning, Biden confirmed in a separate letter from White House lawyers to committee chairs that he was blocking the release of the tapes.
“The lack of legitimate demand for the recordings exposes your possible goals – to chop them up, distort them, and use them for partisan political purposes,” it said.
Mr. Houle’s report comes after a year-long investigation into how Mr. Biden allegedly mishandled classified documents after leaving office as vice president in 2017.
