Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said Biden authorized the National Archives, a government agency that holds records from Trump’s time in office, to turn over an initial batch of documents requested by a House of Representatives select committee investigating the riot.
[...]
“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 by the National Archives.”
Guardian
I'm guessing those records don't give away anything and Trump just doesn't like the idea of himself being accountable for anything, ever.
In August a House select committee investigating the insurrection requested various records, including communication within the White House under Trump, his movements and communications that day and information about planning and funding for rallies held in Washington.
Trump’s legal team sought to deflect some of the requests by invoking executive privilege, a legal doctrine that protects the confidentiality of some communications between White House officials.
[...]
White House counsel, Dana Remus, wrote “these are unique and extraordinary circumstances” and the documents “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”.
[...]
The Guardian reported that he plans to sue to prevent release of the documents if necessary.
[...]
Legal experts say his efforts to block the 6 January documents would be unlikely to succeed.
[...]
The ex-president added in a statement that “Radical Left Democrats” were “trying once again to use Congress to persecute their political opponents”. He claimed, without evidence, that the 6 January committee “is about using the power of the government to silence ‘Trump’ and our Make America Great Again movement, the greatest such achievement of all time”.
[...]
Key Trump allies have also vowed not to cooperate with the select committee. On Thursday Steve Bannon, former White Houses chief strategist, said he would not comply with a subpoena it issued last month.
A lawyer for Bannon, Robert Costello, wrote in a letter to the committee that Bannon would refuse to comply because of Trump’s claim that he can invoke executive privilege to block Bannon’s testimony.
The committee responded on Friday with a threat of criminal contempt charges against Bannon. Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney, who lead the committee, said in a joint statement: “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 that two other witnesses subpoenaed by the panel, the former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and former Pentagon aide Kash Patel, are “engaging” with the committee. The status of a fourth witness, former Trump communications aide Dan Scavino, remains unclear.
A committee effort to charge witnesses with contempt would probably involve a vote of the full House and a referral to the justice department.
I won't hold my breath.
More than 600 people now face criminal charges stemming from the riot.
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