Jan 6 committee defers demand for several Trump administration records

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurgency at
the United States Capitol deferred its demand for several Donald Trump administration records on Tuesday at the White House’s request, the Associated Press reported.

However, President Joe Biden rejected the former President’s use of executive privilege
on hundreds of pages.

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Joe Biden counsel Dana Remus reiterated in a letter to the
National Archives and Records Administration that Biden has “determined
that an assertion of executive privilege is not in the best interests of the
United States, and thus is not justified” for two tranches of documents
sent to the White House for review last month.

The Associated Press obtained the letter on Monday, which
indicates that the committee “delayed” its request for roughly 50
pages of information due to a “compromise” procedure with the Biden
White House. This procedure enables the White House to safeguard some potentially
privileged data without expressly prohibiting their dissemination.

The fate of the papers that the White House accepted for
release will now be decided by the courts.

Former President Donald Trump filed a lawsuit earlier this
month to prevent the archives from revealing his documents, claiming that
Congress has made an overly broad request for presidential materials.

Trump requested a judge to prevent the national archivist
from revealing the papers to Congress in a case filed in federal court in
Washington on Monday. According to the complaint, Trump was told by the
national archivist that the papers would be handed over to the committee on
Nov. 12 “absent any intervening court order.”

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“The committee’s requests are unprecedented in their breadth
and scope and are untethered from any legitimate legislative purpose,” Trump stated
in the complaint.

On January 6, 2021, a mob of President Donald Trump’s
supporters invaded the US Capitol in Washington D.C. They tried to
sabotage President-elect Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 presidential
election by disrupting the joint session of Congress that was convened to
tally electoral votes.