Former President Donald Trump sued last week to block a House committee from obtaining the first batch of documents from the National Archives.
The White House on Monday rejected another executive privilege request by former President Donald Trump over documents sought by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
White House counsel Dana Remus told the National Archives that President Joe Biden has determined that Trump’s effort to keep a new batch of Jan. 6 records out of Congress’ hands “is not in the best interests of the United States.”
In a letter sent Monday to National Archivist David Ferriero, who is also being sued by Mr. Trump, White House counsel Dana Remus wrote the president has no plans to exert executive privilege over other Trump documents sought by the committee, keeping consistent with his earlier stance first made public earlier this month.
She added, “Accordingly, President Biden does not uphold the former President’s assertion of privilege. President Biden has determined that an assertion of executive privilege is not in the best interests of the United States, and therefore is not justified, as to the documents provided to the White House on September 16, 2021, and September 23, 2021.”
Trump sued last week to block the Jan. 6 committee — seven Democrats and two Republican — from obtaining the first batch of documents from the archives. The lawsuit argues that the committee has no power of investigation and that therefore its subpoena is invalid. Trump also insisted that the records are protected by executive privilege.
Back in in March and August, the House committee requested documents from the archives that it said were related to the previous administration’s actions before, during and after the January riot, when a group of Trump’s supporters attacked the building in hope of blocking his electoral defeat. After those requests, Trump notified the archives that he was formally asserting executive privilege.
Biden, however, concluded that the privilege should not apply in this instance. Remus wrote in an Oct. 8 letter that the documents “shed light on events within the White House on and about January 6 and bear on the Select Committee’s need to understand the facts underlying the most serious attack on the operations of the Federal government since the Civil War.”
A lawyer for Bannon said in a letter obtained by CBS News that he was not acting in “defiance” of the subpoena and pointed to instructions from Mr. Trump’s attorney. “President Trump’s counsel stated that they were invoking executive and other privileges and therefore directed us not to produce documents or give testimony that might reveal information President Trump’s counsel seeks to legally protect,” Bannon’s lawyer said.
In addition to Steve Bannon, the committee has subpoenaed the organizers of the Stop the Steal rally that occurred before Mr. Trump’s supporters descended on the Capitol, as well as former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, Pentagon chief of staff Kashyap Patel, Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and communications director Dan Scavino.
Biden administration officials have said they plan to consider the requests from the committee case by case.
