The former president’s lawyers filed the suit in D.C. district court on Monday.
Donald Trump is suing the Jan. 6 select committee and the National Archives to block the release of his White House’s records related to the Capitol attack.
The former president’s lawyers filed the suit in D.C. district court on Monday. It names the Jan. 6 panel’s chair, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), and the national archivist, David Ferriero, along with the committee and the archives. And it calls the Jan. 6 probe “a vexatious, illegal fishing expedition.”
In the lawsuit, Trump’s lawyers ask a federal judge to declare the entire request from the select committee to be invalid and to block the National Archives from turning over any materials to Congress in response to the request. They also specifically ask the court to block the Archives from turning over any documents that Trump says are covered by executive privilege.
And Trump’s team also asks for the court to have the Archives first identify all the documents from Trump’s White House that could be responsive to the request, and then let Trump’s lawyers review them in their entirety before sharing them with Congress. That process could take years.
The lawsuit kicks off a complex, high-stakes legal fight over congressional investigations and executive privilege. In the Nixon era, the Supreme Court acknowledged that former presidents may have an interest in shielding documents from public view. But this is the first public legal dispute between a current president and his predecessor over whether to assert executive privilege.
This new lawsuit was several months in the making. The Jan. 6 select committee asked the National Archives in late August for voluminous records related to Trump administration communications on the day of the attack. It also asked for documents going back to April 1, 2020, related to Trump’s plans for the presidential campaign, including records concerning polling and any documents given to Trump predicting he might lose his re-election bid.
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- Discussion
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Trump's main arguments:
-Committee lacks a valid legislative purpose
-Overbreadth of document requestshttps://t.co/DBht0AHtFd— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) October 18, 2021
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