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.
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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.
“The documents for which the Select Committee has agreed to withdraw or defer its request do not appear to bear on the White House’s preparations for or response to the events of January 6, or on efforts to overturn the election or otherwise obstruct the peaceful transfer of power,” White House deputy counsel Jonathan Su wrote in one of two letters to the committee obtained on Tuesday by Associated Press.
Su wrote that for the committee, withholding the documents “should not compromise its ability to complete its critical investigation expeditiously.”
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For the last several months the National Archives has been sending tranches of documents to the White House and to lawyers for Trump to determine whether they contain any privileged information. Trump has raised both broad objections to the release of the documents as well as specific concerns about particular documents.
The National Archives has said that the records Trump wants to block include presidential diaries, visitor logs, speech drafts, handwritten notes “concerning the events of January 6” from the files of former chief of staff Mark Meadows, and “a draft Executive Order on the topic of election integrity.”
Biden has repeatedly rejected Trump’s claims of executive privilege over those documents, including in a letter sent December 23 regarding about 20 pages of documents.
“The President has determined that an assertion of executive privilege is not in the best interests of the United States, and therefore is not justified,” White House counsel Dana Remus reiterated in the latest letter.
Trump has taken to the courts to block the document releases. A federal appeal court ruled this month against Trump, and he has filed an appeal to the Supreme Court, though the High Court has yet to decide whether to take up the case.
Judge Patricia Millett, writing for the court in the December 9 opinion, said Congress had a “uniquely vital interest” in studying the events of January 6 and Biden had made a “carefully reasoned” determination that the documents were in the public interest and that executive privilege should therefore not be invoked. Trump also failed to show any harm that would occur from the release of the sought-after records, Millett wrote.
“On the record before us, former President Trump has provided no basis for this court to override President Biden’s judgment and the agreement and accommodations worked out between the Political Branches over these documents,” the opinion stated.
