Former President Donald Trump cannot claim executive privilege to prevent the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 riots from accessing over 770 pages of files, call logs and notes from his administration, a federal judge asserted during a hearing on Thursday.
The former president sued the National Archives and Records Administration on October 15 to prevent it from giving the House committee those documents and argued that they must remain secret under the doctrine of executive privilege.
However, District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, cracked down on such efforts on Thursday and said, 'There is only one executive,' referring to President Joe Biden.
'The person best able to determine whether there's an executive privilege is the current executive,' she to Trump's lawyer Justin Clark, according to Newsweek.
Trump cannot claim executive privilege to prevent the House Select Committee from accessing documents related to January 6, District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan said Thursday
Trump sued the National Archives on October 15 to prevent it from giving the House committee 770 sensitive files. He is above with his wife Melania on October 30 at the World Series between the Houston Astros and the Atlanta Braves Truist Park
On October 25, Biden rejected Trump's invocation of executive privilege for two tranches of documents sent to the White House for review last month.
In a letter to the National Archives, Biden counsel Dana Remus said 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.'
Trump's lawsuit also asserted that allowing Congress the ability to access confidential material from the president 'would destroy the very fabric of our constitutional separation of powers and invade fundamental privileges designed to maintain the autonomy and functioning of the Executive Branch.'
Chutkan argued against such a claim and told Clark, 'I don't see where the separation-of-powers argument that you're making exists.'
Clark said in his opening remarks Thursday, 'This is not only a monumental argument, but it's one that will have consequences down the line for generations.'
He asserted that the committee's requests were out of line because they didn't have to do with legislation being considered by Congress, though Chutkan rebuked the argument and said, 'the Jan. 6 riot happened in the Capitol' so Congress had an interest in investigating the attack.
On October 25, Biden rejected Trump's invocation of executive privilege for two tranches of documents sent to the White House for review last month, all related to the January 6 riot
The National Archive has identified nearly 1,600 files related to the insurrection and Trump's efforts to undermine the 2020 election
Chutkan also cracked down on the committee's request for being overly vague in their requests for information. The committee, pictured above, is composed of seven Democrats and two Republicans
She added, 'We're not talking about your client's banking records from before he became president. We're talking about documents that are quintessentially about government business.'
In a positive turn of events for the former president, Chutkan also cracked down on the committee's request for being overly vague. She told committee members, 'There's almost no limit to what you could be seeking.'
She asked House lawyer Douglas Letter why the committee needed Trump campaign polling data that goes back to April 2020.
But Letter said the data would help grant perspective to the committee on when and why Trump decided to amplify false claims that the November 2020 election was stolen from him.
Trump gave a fiery speech at a Save America rally the day shortly before the riot repeating his false claims that the November 2020 election was rigged by widespread voting fraud and encouraged his supporters to go to the Capitol and 'fight like hell' to 'stop the steal.'
According to a sworn declaration from the National Archives released early Saturday morning, among the documents Trump wants to protect are draft remarks for the Save America rally in addition to 30 pages of his daily schedule, visitor logs and call records for both the former president and former Vice President.
It also includes documents from Trump's aides, including three handwritten notes from former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, 'multiple binders' of Kayleigh McEnany's 'made up almost entirely of talking points and statements related to the 2020 election,' files from former advisor Stephen Miller and deputy White House counsel Pat Philbin.
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