Trump sues to keep White House records secret, claiming executive privilege
The lawsuit from Trump is an attempt to block the work of the House committee as it investigates his actions before and during the siege of the Capitol. The court action also marks his latest effort in a long and thorny fight against subpoenas from the Democratic-controlled US House.
The Biden administration has declined to assert executive privilege over a first tranche of Trump-era records, and Trump is currently opposed to the release of about 40 documents.
The Trump lawsuit claims that President Joe Biden’s refusal to protect some of the documents was “a political ploy to accommodate his partisan allies.” A spokesperson for Trump leaned into this argument in a statement announcing the lawsuit that accused Democrats of trying to change the political narrative with their January 6 probe.
“Polling shows Biden’s approval cratering and 2022 slipping out of Democrats’ grasp — no wonder the Democrats and the media want to distract America from: The surrender in Afghanistan, skyrocketing inflation, a border crisis, crippling COVID mandates, and a stalled legislative agenda,” said Taylor Budowich, a spokesperson for Trump and his political organization.
The White House stood by its decision not to assert privilege over documents sought by the committee, alleging in a statement Monday that Trump “abused the office of the presidency and attempted to subvert a peaceful transfer of power.”
“The former president’s actions represented a unique — and existential — threat to our democracy that can’t be swept under the rug. As President Biden determined, the constitutional protections of executive privilege should not be used to shield information that reflects a clear and apparent effort to subvert the Constitution itself,” White House spokesman Mike Gwin said in a statement.
Among several legal arguments he’s making in court, Trump claims the House Committee hasn’t made clear the legislative reasons for why it needs records from Trump’s presidency, and that he should have some ability to keep private his discussions as president.
It also claims that the Presidential Records Act is unconstitutional if it is “read so broadly as to allow an incumbent President unfettered discretion to waive the previous President’s executive privilege, mere months following an administration change.”
The National Archives is slated to turn over the requested documents to Congress by early next month — putting Trump’s court pursuit on a short timeline if he wants to block the release of the information to the House.
Trump points to tax returns case for help
In the lawsuit, Trump argues the House committee is on a politically motivated “fishing expedition.”
His lawyers say the House committee has no real legislative purpose — and that the Supreme Court in 2020 said Congress needs to have one when seeking information about the President.
The House select panel “apparently believes it has been given a free pass to request a sweeping set of documents and records,” Trump’s lawyers wrote on Monday.
Several of Trump’s arguments in the lawsuit Monday point to the Supreme Court’s ruling on the House’s 2019 subpoena for Trump’s tax records from Mazars USA. In that case, the Supreme Court…
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