The National Archives says the former president is asserting executive privilege over phone logs, notes and other records concerning the attack on the Capitol.
WASHINGTON — Former President Donald J. Trump is seeking to block from release a wide range of documents related to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, the National Archives said Saturday in an early-morning federal court filing detailing what Mr. Trump is fighting to keep secret.
In the filing, in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, John Laster, the director of the National Archives’ presidential materials division, laid out for the first time exactly which documents Mr. Trump was asserting executive privilege over. The former president is hoping to prevent the documents from being reviewed by the House committee empowered to investigate the mob violence at the Capitol.
According to the filing, Mr. Trump has asserted executive privilege specifically over 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 counsel. Mr. Trump is also objecting to the release of the White House Daily Diary — a record of the president’s movements, phone calls, trips, briefings, meetings and activities — as well as logs showing phone calls to the president and to Vice President Mike Pence concerning Jan. 6, Mr. Laster wrote.
Mr. Trump has also asserted executive privilege over 656 pages that include proposed talking points for Kayleigh McEnany, his former press secretary; a handwritten note concerning Jan. 6; a draft text of a presidential speech for the “Save America” rally that preceded the mob attack; and a draft executive order on the topic of election integrity, the filing states.
Finally, Mr. Trump asserted executive privilege over 68 additional pages, including a draft proclamation honoring the Capitol Police and two officers who died after the riot, Brian D. Sicknick and Howard Liebengood, as well as related emails; a memo about a potential lawsuit against several states that Joseph R. Biden Jr. won in the November election; an email chain from a state official regarding election-related issues; and talking points on alleged election irregularities in one Michigan county.
The filing comes in response to a lawsuit Mr. Trump filed this month against the National Archives seeking to block the disclosure of White House files related to his actions and communications surrounding the Jan. 6 riot.
In that lawsuit, in a 26-page complaint, a lawyer for Mr. Trump argued that the materials must remain secret as a matter of 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 has refused to assert executive privilege over them.
The lawsuit touched off what is likely to be a major legal battle between Mr. Trump and the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, in which a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol seeking to disrupt Congress’s counting of electoral votes to formalize Mr. Biden’s victory. Its outcome will carry consequences for how much the panel can uncover about Mr. 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.
The leaders of the committee, Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, and Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, have condemned Mr. Trump’s lawsuit as “nothing more than an attempt to delay and obstruct our probe.”
“It’s hard to imagine a more compelling public interest than trying to get answers about an attack on our democracy and an attempt to overturn the results of an election,” Mr. Thompson, the committee’s chairman, and Ms. Cheney, the vice chairwoman, wrote in a statement after the suit’s filing.
Understand the Claim of Executive Privilege in the Jan. 6. Inquiry
A key issue yet untested. Donald Trump’s power as former president to keep information from his White House secret has become a central issue in the House’s investigation of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Amid a new lawsuit by Mr. Trump and a move to hold Stephen K. Bannon in contempt of Congress, here’s a breakdown of executive privilege:
The committee has demanded detailed records about Mr. Trump’s every movement and meeting on the day of the assault. The panel’s demands, sent to the National Archives and Records Administration, include material about any plans formed within the White House or other federal agencies to derail the Electoral College vote count by Congress.
“Plaintiff’s claims of executive privilege fail because the privilege is not absolute, and here it is outweighed by Congress’s compelling need for information about the extraordinary attack that occurred on the Capitol,” lawyers for the government wrote Saturday in response to Mr. Trump’s lawsuit. “The committee’s investigation into the Jan. 6 attack plainly embodies a legitimate legislative purpose.”
In a pair of letters this month to the National Archives, which is the custodian of White House papers from Mr. Trump’s tenure, Mr. Biden’s top White House lawyer, Dana Remus, made clear that the current president did not think a claim of executive privilege was legitimate under these circumstances.
Mr. Trump’s lawsuit names as defendants Mr. Thompson and David S. Ferriero, the head of the National Archives.
Source: Elections - nytimes.com
