Early last year, President Joe Biden and his team made an unexpected announcement: The Delaware Democrat, after leaving the vice presidency, inadvertently took some classified documents with him. Team Biden contacted the authorities, returned the materials and announced plans to cooperate with any investigation.

Soon after, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Robert Hur to serve as a special counsel in the matter and eventually to prepare a report on his findings.

It concluded more or less how everyone assumed it would: The prosecutor decided not to indict the incumbent president. Soon after, Hur wrapped up his work and released a report, including a transcript of an interview Biden volunteered to participate in. (Donald Trump, in contrast, refused to be interviewed by either special counsel Robert Mueller or special counsel Jack Smith.)

In theory, that ended the story. In practice, however, there was one additional element that Republicans decided to pursue: the audio recording of the incumbent president’s Q&A with investigators.

The Biden administration has declined GOP lawmakers’ requests for the tape, and there’s no great mystery as to why: Officials realize that Republicans are simply looking for a political toy they can play with ahead of Election Day 2024. Former Republican Rep. Ken Buck admitted as much this week, explaining that Congress already has the transcript and relevant information, adding that his former GOP colleagues are “just looking for something for political purposes.”

Given that there’s no legitimate or legislative reason to release the audio, Team Biden has asserted executive privilege. White House Counsel Ed Siskel told congressional Republicans in a letter yesterday, “The absence of a legitimate need for the audio recordings lays bare your likely goal — to chop them up, distort them, and use them for partisan political purposes.”

Congressional Republicans, on cue, have thrown fits over the refusal — two committees voted yesterday to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt — though one key GOP lawmaker inadvertently gave away the game in a written letter to allies.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer’s latest fundraising appeal reads in part, “Biden and his advisors are terrified that I will release the recordings, forcing the media and Democrats to answer for the dismal decline of Biden’s mental state.” The Kentucky Republican added that audio recording “could be the final blow to Biden with swing voters across the country.”

In other words, the White House’s counsel’s office accused Comer and his colleagues of wanting to use Biden’s interview “for partisan political purposes,” after which Comer put in writing that he’s focused on using the audio recording to target “swing voters.”

House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin wasted little time seizing on the Comer’s fundraising appeal.

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“I must confess my disappointment to be handed this fundraising solicitation, signed by you as chairman of the House Oversight Committee,” the Maryland Democrat told Comer during yesterday’s proceedings. “I thought that you were serious about the legal enterprise here and not just another political huckster calling hearings to score cheap political points and to make a buck.”

At the same hearing, Rep. Jared Moskowitz decided to do a dramatic reading of Comer’s fundraising appeal, emphasizing that the GOP congressman sent out his letter under a banner that said it was from “the desk of” the Oversight Committee chairman.

The point the Florida Democrat emphasized was simple: The public doesn’t have to take Comer’s critics’ word for it. Comer’s own letter was effectively a confession that this entire charade was — and is — a partisan stunt.