Donald Trump doesn’t want too close of an eye cast on where he was or who he was talking to in the ramp up to the Capitol riot and that extends to notes that his aides took, chiefly Kayleigh McEnany and Mark Meadows. To that end “Trump has sued to prevent the National Archives from transmitting those documents, and thousands more, to the House committee investigating the attack. President Joe Biden declined to assert executive privilege on most of Trump’s records after determining that doing so is “not in the best interests of the United States.” YaHoo News:
Billy Laster, the director of the National Archives’ White House Liaison Division, wrote that among the particular documents Trump has sought to block are 30 pages of “daily presidential diaries, schedules, appointment information showing visitors to the White House, activity logs, call logs, and switchboard shift-change checklists showing calls to the President and Vice President, all specifically for or encompassing January 6, 2021; 13 pages of ”drafts of speeches, remarks, and correspondence concerning the events of January 6, 2021; and “three handwritten notes concerning the events of January 6 from (former White House chief of staff Mark) Meadows’ files.”
Trump also tried to exert executive privilege over pages from former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany’s binders of talking points and statements “principally relating to allegations of voter fraud, election security, and other topics concerning the 2020 election.”
Other documents included a handwritten note from Meadows’ files “listing potential or scheduled briefings and telephone calls concerning the January 6 certification and other election issues” and “a draft Executive Order on the topic of election integrity.”
Laster’s declaration notes that the National Archives’ search began with paper documents because it took until August for digital records from the Trump White House to be transferred to the agency. The National Archives, he wrote, has identified “several hundred thousand potentially responsive records” of emails from the Trump White House out of about 100 million sent or received during his administration, and was working to determine whether they pertained to the House request.
Biden has so far waived executive privilege on nearly all the documents that the committee has asked for, though the committee agreed to “defer” its requests for several dozen pages of records at the behest of the Biden White House.
In explaining why Biden has not shielded Trump’s records, White House counsel Dana Remus wrote that they could “shed light on events within the White House on and about January 6 and bear on the Select Committee’s need to understand the facts underlying the most serious attack on the operations of the Federal Government since the Civil War.”
And you’ll love this. Trump says Biden is infringing upon his constitutional rights.
The suit also challenges the legality of the Presidential Records Act, arguing that allowing an incumbent president to waive executive privilege of a predecessor just months after he left office is inherently unconstitutional. Biden has said he would go through each request separately to determine whether that privilege should be waived.
The January 6 Select Committee has its work cut out for it. Trump has made it clear that he’ll deflect, obfuscate and battle every inch of the way. Interesting behavior for a man who claims to be completely innocent of all wrongdoing, what?
Watergate was a picnic in the park.
The former guy isn’t president, adn privilege doesn’t cover stuff that wasn’t part of his official job, like those logs he wants to keep hidden and material intended for others to read.
I’m curious as to what part of the US Constitution says that evidence of possible criminality is covered by ‘executive privilege’
More to the point, anytime someone goes to such lengths to prevent documents from being released, you usually hear folks on the right argue “Well, if they haven’t done anything wrong, what are they trying to hide” (and the far right seem even more likely to scream it).
So, with that idea in mind, “If Donald Trump REALLY didn’t do anything wrong and there’s nothing in any of the documents that would suggest he did anything wrong, then why doesn’t he willingly agree to their release?” We ALL know the answer: The documents will show that he and his inner circle were fully responsible for inciting the mob to riot and storm the Capitol with criminal intent.
It was more than inciting a riot! It was a pre-planned attempt to block congress from certifying the election so that Traitor Tot could stay in office. Thats what the whole election fraud /stolen election lie has been about all along…that Traitor Tot couldn’t admit to himself that he lost, and the he is the biggest loser in history! I am sure that many folks can remember that Traitor Tot said he would not accept the result of the 2016 election if he lost, and he said the same thing about 2020. His twisted and deranged few remaining brain cells will not let him accept that he is the most disliked loser on the planet!
All this commotion in Trump’s mind, shows a positive panic of the coming, “GOTCH-YA”, by the Committee …
Since he does NOT know the particulars of the closed door conversations, made by the Committee, he is using huge and wild, thrashing, statements of a particularly STUPID person, like an animal in one of those inhumane clamp traps, ready to chew off their own leg to escape … someone should keep an eye on Trump, his feeble brain may start with the foaming at the mouth, in the reality of an INTERNATIONAL collapse of everything Trump, his empire of lies and grift, his precious Trump façade, mega business fraud … a trade name going into negative value …
The money that he craves, will be his total undoing, all the money laundry functions, Russian support via criminal Putin investments in failing golf courses, for clean cash, his record of putrid actions around young girls … he will become that small piece of charcoal left in the barbecue grill after the big picnic where every MAGAT was screaming, “Lock Her Up”, the hand waving, rubber faced traitor will have nothing left … so beautiful … his current actions are pouring gasoline on the Committee’s functions …
On the one hand, he will NOT have enough cash to buy his way out of prison, on the other hand he will fade to black, easily put away out of his treasured spotlight, “Those were horrible years”, will be the only comment made in any recall of the hundreds of thousands of dead citizens, simply because of Trump’s inability to be an actual president …