Trump Argues Temporary Block of Documents Causes 'No Harm' to Jan 6 Investigation
Facing a looming deadline, former President Donald Trump is asking a court to temporarily halt the release of documents to the Select Committee investigating the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
The National Archives is set to release dozens of documents to the committee on Friday at 6 p.m. if a court doesn't intervene. Trump lost a critical battle on Tuesday evening when a judge ruled the documents couldn't be kept confidential under executive privilege because President Joe Biden signed off on their release. And now, the former president is asking for a different court to prevent documents from being released until his appeal can be heard.
"Unlike the irreparable harm President Trump will suffer absent interim relief, Appellees will suffer no harm by delaying production while the parties litigate the request's validity," Trump's legal team wrote in a court filing.
Trump's attorney argued the documents are "safe in the possession of the Archivist" and an injunction wouldn't block them from ever being released, but would only "postpone" their disclosure.
The House Select Committee is tasked with investigating the Capitol riot, including who and what led to the insurrection. They're requesting documents dating back to April 2020, a request that Judge Tanya Chutkan, who ruled against Trump on Tuesday, acknowledged was "broad." Attorneys for the committee argued the documents are potentially necessary for understanding "the atmosphere" surrounding the riot.
"This attack didn't come out of nowhere. It wasn't some spontaneous thing that arose on January 6," Douglas Letter, general counsel for the House of Representatives, argued at a hearing last week. "We need to go back to the many attempts that were made before the election to try to build major mistrust about the election itself which undermine our democracy so if President Trump did lose he could say this was unfair and generate lots of anger in ways that led to January 6."
Although the Capitol riot was widely condemned on a bipartisan basis, Democrats' attempts at forming a 9/11-style commission to investigate the violence were rendered futile. Without Republican support, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi moved forward with a Select Committee, nominating two Republicans, Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, to serve on it.
At the heart of the investigation is Trump, who's faced criticism from both sides of the political aisle for fueling the violence with his claims of election fraud. Trump pushed back on the committee for being a "witch hunt" and dismissed it as a politically-motivated attack on him.
Trump also accused Biden of refusing to protect the documents the committee requested in a "political ploy to accommodate his partisan allies."
Trump's team has argued that the records that were requested are "privileged and confidential" under the executive privilege of the president. In her Tuesday ruling, Chutkan said Biden was better positioned to decide what should fall under executive privilege since he's the incumbent president and his decision should be given deference over Trump's opinion.
If the records are allowed to be released, Trump's attorney argued Trump will suffer "irreparable harm" because of the denial of his constitutional right to be "fully heard" on the disagreement between himself and Biden.
His attorneys also acknowledged that if the documents are released on Friday, Trump's case could be rendered moot.
