TRUMP SUES TO BLOCK DISCLOSURE OF PAPERS
White House files related to actions on Jan. 6 riot at issue
Former President Donald Trump on Monday sued Congress and the National Archives, seeking to block the disclosure of White House files related to his actions and communications surrounding the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
In a 26-page complaint, a lawyer for Trump argued that the materials must remain secret as a matter of executive privilege. He said the Constitution gives the former president the right to demand their confidentiality even though he is no longer in office — and even though President Joe Biden has refused to assert executive privilege over them.
The lawsuit touches off what is likely to be a major legal battle between Trump and the House committee investigating the attack, in which a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol seeking to disrupt Congress’ counting of electoral votes to formalize Biden’s victory. Its outcome will carry consequences for how much the panel can uncover about Trump’s role in the riot, pose thorny questions for the Biden administration, and potentially forge new precedents
about presidential prerogatives and the separation of powers.
“In a political ploy to accommodate his partisan allies, President Biden has refused to assert executive privilege over numerous clearly privileged documents requested by the committee,” Jesse Binnall, Trump’s lawyer, wrote in his complaint.
The House committee scrutinizing the Capitol attack has demanded detailed records about Trump’s every movement and meeting on the day of the assault.
Its demands, sent to the National Archives and Records Administration, include material about any plans hatched within the White House or other federal agencies to derail the Electoral College vote count by
Congress.
In a pair of letters this month to the National Archives, which is the custodian of White House papers from Trump’s tenure, Biden’s top White House lawyer, Dana Remus, made clear that the current president does not think a claim of executive privilege is legitimate under these circumstances.
“The constitutional protections of executive privilege should not be used to shield, from Congress or the public, information that reflects a clear and apparent effort to subvert the Constitution itself,” Remus wrote.
Presidents tend to jealously guard executive privilege, which can shield from disclosure White House deliberations or documents involving official presidential duties.
But by pitting the views of a former president seeking to protect the confidentiality of White House documents from his administration against the views of the incumbent officeholder, the lawsuit could forge new constitutional ground, legal specialists said.
Trump’s lawsuit names as defendants Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., chair of the special House committee investigating the attack, and David Ferriero, head of the National Archives.
At issue is what the former president was doing and saying before and during the run-up to the Jan. 6 riot, when throngs of his supporters breached the Capitol, hunting for lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence in an effort to get them to overturn the election, and brutalizing police officers in the name of Trump.
Trump had urged his followers to converge on Washington for a “Stop the Steal” rally that day.
At that gathering near the White House, he told them that they needed to “fight much harder” against “bad people” and “show strength” at the Capitol, and that “very different rules” applied, among other things.
The House impeached him for inciting the riot, but the Senate acquitted him.