President Donald Trump at the White House.
REUTERS/Joshua Roberts
- Trump asked the Supreme Court to block the release of White House documents to the Jan. 6 committee.
- The committee requested the documents as part of its investigation into the Capitol riot.
- A federal judge and a federal appeals court previously rejected Trump’s bid.
Former President Donald Trump on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to block the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riot from obtaining his White House records as part of its probe.
“Congress limited its own access to Presidential records when it adopted the Presidential Records Act, a law it now stubbornly refuses to follow,” Trump’s lawyers said in their filing to the high court. They later added: “The records of a former President are not distributed freely upon the conclusion of his term of office, even to Congress.”
Thursday’s filing was expected after a federal appeals court earlier this month rejected the former president’s bid to block the Jan. 6 panel from obtaining a tranche of executive branch records it said were relevant to its investigation.
Trump asserted executive privilege over the documents, but the Biden White House declined to do the same and authorized the National Archives and Records Administration to turn over the materials to Congress. Trump filed a lawsuit in response, setting up the first constitutional showdown testing whether a sitting president has the right to overrule their predecessor’s assertion of executive privilege.
A federal judge rejected Trump’s request in November, saying that while he has the right to assert privilege, President Joe Biden is not required to honor it.
Trump’s legal team appealed the ruling, but the Washington, DC, Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court’s ruling in a blistering 68-page opinion written by Judge Patricia Millett.
“Benjamin Franklin said, at the founding, that we have ‘[a] Republic’—’if [we] can keep it.’ The events of January 6th exposed the fragility of those democratic institutions and traditions that we had perhaps come to take for granted,” Millett wrote.
“Former President Trump has given this court no legal reason to cast aside President Biden’s assessment of the Executive Branch interests at stake, or to create a separation of powers conflict that the Political Branches have avoided,” the ruling said.
This story is developing. Please check back for updates.
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