WASHINGTON – Former President Donald J. Trump wants to prevent the release of a wide range of documents related to the January 6 attack on the Capitol, the National Archives said Saturday in an early morning role as a federal court detailing what Mr. Trump is working to keep a secret.
V application to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, John Laster, Director of the Presidential Materials Department of the National Archives, stated for the first time which documents Mr. Trump argued executive privilege the end. The former president hopes to prevent the documents from being reviewed House committee authorized to investigate mafia violence at the Capitol.
Given the role, Mr. Trump claimed executive privilege specifically for 770 pages of documents, including 46 pages of records from the files of Mark Meadows, his former chief of staff; Stephen Miller, his former senior adviser; and Patrick Philbin, his former deputy adviser. Mr Trump also opposes the publication of the White House daily diary – a record of the president’s movements, phone calls, trips, briefings, meetings and activities – as well as diaries showing phone calls to President and Vice President Mike Pence. regarding January 6, wrote Mr. Laster.
Mr Trump has also exercised executive privilege on 656 pages, which include proposed discussion points for Kayleigh McEnany, his former spokeswoman; a handwritten note on January 6; draft text of the presidential speech for Let’s Save America. who was before the mafia attack; and a draft executive order on the subject of election integrity, the application reads.
Finally, Mr. Trump exercised executive privilege on 68 additional pages, including a draft proclamation in honor of the Capitol Police and two police officers who died after the riots, Brian D. Sicknick in Howard Liebengood, as well as related emails; minutes of a possible lawsuit against several states, won by Joseph R. Biden Jr in the November election; a civil servant’s e-mail chain on election-related issues; and talk points about alleged election irregularities in one Michigan county.
The application is a response to the lawsuit Mr. Trump filed this month against the National Archives, which seeks to block the disclosure of White House files related to his actions and communications January 6 riots.
In this lawsuit, va 26-page appeal, lawyer for Mr. Trump argued that the materials should remain secret as far as the matter was concerned executive privilege. The lawyer said the constitution gave the former president the right to demand their confidentiality even though he was no longer in office – and even though President Biden refused to exercise executive privileges over them.
The lawsuit triggered what is likely to be a major legal battle between Mr. Trump and a House House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack in which a crowd of his supporters stormed the Capitol to disrupt a congressional vote count to formalize Mr. Biden’s victory. Its outcome will have implications for how much the committee can reveal about Mr Trump’s role in the riots, ask stubborn questions for the Biden administration and potentially set new precedents on presidential rights and power-sharing.
The committee’s chairman, Representative Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi, and Representative Liz Cheney, a Republican from Wyoming, condemned Mr Trump’s lawsuit as “nothing more than an attempt to delay and obstruct our investigation.”
“It is difficult to imagine a more convincing public interest than trying to get answers about the attack on our democracy and the attempt to annul the election results,” Mr Thompson, chairman of the committee, and Mrs Cheney, vice-president, he wrote in a statement after the action has been brought.
Understand the request for executive privilege in the January 6 investigation
A key issue that has not yet been tested. Donald Trump’s power as a former president to keep information about his White House a secret has become a central issue in the House of Representatives ’investigation into the January 6 riots at the Capitol. Sredi a new lawsuit g. Trump and a move to detain Stephen K. Bannon contempt for Congress, here is a breakdown of executive privileges:
The Commission has demanded detailed records of every movement and meeting of Mr. Trump on the day of the attack. The committee’s requests to the National Archives and Records Administration include material on any plans drawn up by the White House or other federal agencies to derail the congressional counting of the Electoral College.
“The plaintiff’s claims of executive privilege fail because the privilege is not absolute, and here it is outweighed by Congress’s urgent need for information about the extraordinary attack on the Capitol,” government attorneys wrote Saturday in response to Mr. Trump’s lawsuit. “The committee’s investigation into the January 6 attack clearly embodies a legitimate legislative intent.”
V par from letters This month, Dana Remus, attorney general Bidn at the White House, told the National Archives, which is the custodian of White House documents from Mr Trump’s time, that the current president does not consider the claim for executive privilege to be in line with these laws. circumstances.
Trump’s lawsuit names Thompson and David S. Ferrier, head of the National Archives, as defendants.