Biden rejects Trump’s request to withhold documents from House committee investigating Jan. 6 attack
President Joe Biden rejected former president Donald Trump’s request to block documents from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, the White House said on Friday, likely setting up a legal and political battle.
Trump has claimed executive privilege in seeking to evade the committee’s demands for details about Trump and his aides’ activities during the Jan. 6 attack. But in the letter to the National Archives and Records Administration, the White House said Biden “determined that an assertion of executive privilege is not in the best interests of the United States.”
Trump responded with a letter of his own Friday that formally claimed executive privilege over about 50 documents requested by the select committee.
At a White House briefing, press secretary Jen Psaki said the Biden decision reflected the gravity of the attack.
“The president’s dedicated to ensuring that something like that could never happen again, which is why the administration is cooperating with ongoing investigations,” Psaki said. “The president has determined that an assertion of executive privilege is not warranted for the first set of documents from the Trump White House that have been provided to us by the National Archives.”
In his letter to the National Archives on Friday, Trump argued that some records requested by the committee “contain information subject to executive privilege, including the presidential communications and deliberative process privileges.”
Trump also makes a more sweeping claim to “protective assertion of constitutionally based privilege with respect to all additional records” that were requested.
“In cases like this, where Congress has declined to grant sufficient time to conduct a full review, there is a longstanding bipartisan tradition of protective assertions of executive privilege designed to ensure the ability to make a final privilege assertion, if necessary, over some or all of the requested material,” Trump writes.
Biden’s decision on Friday came after former White House strategist Stephen Bannon told the House committee that he cannot comply with the panel’s sweeping request for documents and testimony.
But the committee said two other Trump advisers - former chief of staff Mark Meadows and national security aide Kash Patel - are “engaging with the committee,” despite President Trump’s requests that they cite executive privilege for matters having to do with presidential decision-making.
“While Mr. Meadows and Mr. Patel are, so far, engaging with the Select Committee, Mr. Bannon has indicated that he will try to hide behind vague references to privileges of the former President,” the committee’s leaders said in a joint statement issued Friday afternoon.
Bannon’s lawyer, Robert Costello, said he had no immediate comment on the statement from the commitee’s leaders.
“The Select Committee fully expects all of these witnesses to comply with our demands for both documents and deposition testimony . . . we will not allow any witness to defy a lawful subpoena or attempt to run out the clock, and we will swiftly consider advancing a criminal contempt of Congress referral,” said the statement signed by Chairman Bennie Thompson, DMiss., and Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo.