The White House confirmed Friday that it won’t grant former President Donald Trump executive privilege over the first trove of documents that have been requested by the select congressional committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6 attack.
The Jan. 6 committee is ramping up its investigation into rioters breaching the U.S. Capitol to overturn the 2020 presidential election and stop the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory. The panel has requested documents – and demanded subpoenas in some cases – from a range of executive branch agencies and members of Trump’s inner circle to try and piece together what the former president and administration knew leading up to and on Jan. 6.
In response to the committee’s demands over the past two months, Trump claims executive privilege can shield them from the subpoenas and document requests, including the ones to the National Archives and Records Administration which houses communications records at the White House. But White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Friday that Biden wouldn’t assert executive privilege over the first batch of documents, though she didn’t rule it out over future ones.
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“As a part of this process, the president has determined that an assertion of executive privilege is not warranted for the first set of documents from the Trump White House that have been provided to us from the National Archives,” Psaki said at Friday’s press briefing. “As we’ve said previously, this will be an ongoing process and this is just the first set of documents.”
“And we will evaluate questions of privilege on a case by case basis, but the president has also been clear that he believes it to be of the utmost importance for both Congress and the American people to have a complete understanding of the events of that day to prevent them from happening again,” she added.
The two requests sent to the National Archives from members of Congress in March and August are sweeping and most notably ask for documents and communications on Jan. 6 related to Trump himself, former Vice President Mike Pence, Trump’s adult sons and daughter, former chief of staff Mark Meadows and other close advisers and allies.
Following the Biden White House’s announcement, Trump fiercely pushed back, saying he sent his own letter Friday to the National Archives arguing he has executive privilege rights over a few dozen of the requested documents. He went further by claiming a “protective assertion of constitutionally based privilege with respect to all additional records following the First Tranche.”
“The committee requested an extremely broad set of documents and records, potentially numbering in the millions, which unquestionably contain information protected from disclosure by the executive and other privileges, including but not limited to the presidential communications, deliberative process and attorney-client privileges,” Trump wrote.
The nine-member House panel has also issued a number of subpoenas for documents and testimony from four former Trump staffers, including Meadows, former White House deputy chief of staff for communications Daniel Scavino, former Defense Department official Kashyap Patel and former adviser Stephen Bannon.
But after Bannon reportedly refused to comply with the subpoena, the Jan. 6 select committee released a statement Friday afternoon detailing that while Meadows and Patel are so far cooperating, Bannon is refusing and leaning on executive privileges associated with Trump. Chairman Bennie Thompson of Mississippi and Vice-Chair Liz Cheney of Wyoming said they’re weighing a possible referral to hold Bannon in contempt of Congress for defying the subpoena.
“While Mr. Meadows and Mr. Patel are, so far, engaging with the select committee, Mr. Bannon has indicated that he will try to hide behind vague references to privileges of the former president,” Thompson and Cheney said without mentioning Scavino. “The select committee fully expects all of these witnesses to comply with our demands for both documents and deposition testimony.”
“Though the select committee welcomes good-faith engagement with witnesses seeking to cooperate with our investigation, we will not allow any witness to defy a lawful subpoena or attempt to run out the clock, and we will swiftly consider advancing a criminal contempt of Congress referral,” they added, without directly naming Bannon.
The creation of the committee over the summer was a politically volatile issue that sharply divided Democrats and Republicans.
After a bipartisan attempt to establish an independent commission fell through, Democrats pushed for a House select committee to solely investigate the Jan. 6 attack on top of the ongoing ones happening across other panels. Nearly all Republicans refused to participate or support it aside from two members who voted to impeach Trump over his handling of the Jan. 6 attack: Cheney and Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois.
