- Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit trying to prevent the Jan. 6 committee from obtaining certain White House files.
- A new court filing reveals the types of documents the former president is attempting to withhold.
- One former GOP congressman said the files are “surely embarrassing and probably indicting.”
Former President Donald Trump has been trying to block the House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol from obtaining White House records to investigate his possible role in the Capitol insurrection.
On Friday, a new court filing by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) broadly explains the types of documents he is trying to keep from the committee.
The committee issued three sweeping records requests from several federal agencies and former White House officials between August and October.
Of the 1,600 pages requested, the former president asserted executive privilege over 750 pages. President Biden’s White House said it would not hold up the privilege claims.
On October 18, Donald Trump filed a lawsuit against the House committee and NARA to block the subpoenas.
The latest court filing shows that among the documents held in the National Archive, the former president wants to keep privileged are records of his daily presidential diaries, activity logs, and call logs relating to January 6.
He has also asserted executive privilege over files of various former White House officials, including files and handwritten notes of Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and files of former advisor Stephen Miller.
Trump also tried to block the committee from receiving over 629 pages from the binders of former White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany.
Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
McEnany’s binders mostly contained proposed talking points for briefings, along with some documents and statements relating to allegations of election fraud.
Trump is also trying to withhold a draft text of his speech for the Save America March on January 6 and a draft proclamation to honor deceased Capitol Police officers Brian Sicknick and Howard Liebengood.
While executive privilege can apply to certain presidential communications, President Biden has said that in this case, it is outweighed by public interest and Congress’s need for information about the Capitol riot.
On Thursday night, a bipartisan group of 66 former members of Congress, including 33 Republicans, filed a legal brief urging the courts to dismiss Trump’s lawsuit and investigate his role in the riot.
Former Florida Rep. Carlos Curbelo, one of the Republicans who signed the brief, told MSNBC on Friday, “the reason Donald Trump is claiming executive privilege is because he doesn’t want people to know the truth because whatever is in those documents is surely embarrassing and probably indicting.”
Curbelo, a political analyst with MSNBC, added that Trump was reluctant to hand over the documents because “he probably thinks it will make it harder for him to run in 2024.”
On Friday, the January 6 committee also filed a legal brief opposing Trump’s attempts to prevent them from receiving the files.
They wrote that his lawsuit was “extremely unlikely to win on the merits” because the former president’s claims of executive privilege are “unprecedented and deeply flawed.”
Source Article from https://www.businessinsider.com/files-trump-block-the-jan-6-committee-from-obtaining-2021-10
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