White House and January 6 committee agree to shield some documents
- The House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol has agreed to defer its request for hundreds of pages of records from the Donald Trump administration
- The deferral is in response to concerns by the Biden White House that releasing all the Trump administration documents could compromise national security
The deferral is in response to concerns by the Biden White House that releasing all the Trump administration documents sought by the committee could compromise national security and executive privilege.
Trump is appealing to the Supreme Court to try to block the National Archives and Records Administration, which maintains custody of the documents from his time in office, from giving them to the committee.
The agreement to keep some Trump-era records away from the committee is memorialised in a December 16 letter from the White House counsel’s office. It mostly shields records that do not involve the events of January 6 but were covered by the committee’s sweeping request for documents from the Trump White House about the events of that day.
Dozen of pages created January 6 do not pertain to the assault on the Capitol. Other documents involve sensitive preparations and deliberations by the National Security Council. Biden’s officials were worried that if those pages were turned over to Congress, that would set a troublesome precedent for the executive branch, no matter who is president.
Still other documents are highly classified and the White House asked Congress to work with the federal agencies that created them to discuss their release.