In December, a federal appeals court panel tossed out former President Donald Trump’s effort to stop congressional Jan. 6 investigators from obtaining his White House records, and now he wants the Supreme Court to reverse that decision. This move is Trump’s last chance at hiding the records after trying to claim executive privilege.
“Trump wants the justices to reverse a unanimous ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which rejected his assertions of executive privilege and request to keep secret roughly 800 pages of Trump’s papers,” the Washington Post reports. “President Biden determined the material could be released to the committee.”
Trump took it to the high court.
“Absent judicial intervention, President Trump will suffer irreparable harm through the effective denial of a constitutional and statutory right to be fully heard on a serious disagreement between the former and incumbent President,” Trump’s lawyer Jesse R. Binnall wrote.
Stay up-to-date with the latest news!
Subscribe and start recieving our daily emails.
“President Trump is more than an ordinary citizen,” the filing states. “He is one of only five living Americans who, as former Presidents, are granted special authority to make determinations regarding the disclosure of records and communications created during their terms of office.”
The twice-impeached one-term president’s lawyers previously asked a federal judge to invalidate the entire request for records from the select committee, to block the Archives from turning over any materials to Congress in response to the request, and to specifically block the Archives from turning over any documents that Trump says are covered by executive privilege. However, President Joe Biden has made it clear that he won’t invoke executive privilege for the former president.
Executive privilege is afforded to current presidents, not former presidents. And the former president can’t use it to cover up a crime. Trump is good at stalling out the courts, but this seems to be moving through the courts fast. Trump’s attorneys argued that the circuit court’s decision would set a bad precedent in future disputes over access to former presidents’ confidential records, but this is about an investigation into an attack on U.S. soil, so I don’t see how he can win this.
Featured image via Gage Skidmore/Flickr, under Creative Commons license 2.0
