Posted on Oct 19, 2021, 11:52 AM
All light will not be shed any time soon around the gear that led to the attacks on the United States Capitol, whose images had been around the world. Donald Trump has indeed initiated legal proceedings to block the disclosure of White House documents relating to the deadly assault on the seat of the United States Congress on January 6.
A commission of the United States Congress had requested a series of official documents from the National Archives as part of its investigation into the event. “The commission’s request is nothing but a vexatious and illegal attempt to fish for information, openly supported by (Joe) Biden and designed to unconstitutionally investigate President Trump and his administration,” underlines the complaint of the former American president lodged in a court of Washington.
Executive privilege
Donald Trump is asking a federal judge to declare inadmissible any request by the commission and to prevent the National Archives from transmitting the documents to investigators. He invokes the executive’s right to keep certain information secret, relying on a Supreme Court ruling on the right of presidents to keep certain documents and interviews confidential in order to ensure more frank discussions with their advisers . Donald Trump is far from the first American president to have used this privilege.
However, no court has said this applied to former presidents. For now, Joe Biden has the final say on the matter. The current president has already claimed that he would allow the disclosure of a first batch of documents, thus dismissing the objections of his predecessor.
Aftermath of a legal battle
Donald Trump thus tries once again to obstruct the investigation into the gear that led to the attack of thousands of his supporters, who stormed the seat of the American Parliament in order to block the electoral victory by Democrat Joe Biden. The former president has already asked his key aides – from his last chief of staff Mark Meadows to his political strategy adviser Steve Bannon – to ignore subpoenas to appear before the parliamentary commission of inquiry.
In addition to the hearings, the committee would also like to get its hands on many documents and archives around the presidential election and the protests that followed the results. First, documents related to Donald Trump’s public comments about the events of January 6 and the archives of his public statements between the November 3 election and the January 20 inauguration. But also all the photos, videos and other recordings taken in the White House on January 6, as well as the records of visitors. As such, the members of the commission believe that the activities of the Republican president on the day of the attack are at the center of their investigation.
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