Trump has asked the Supreme Court to stop releasing White House records

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Washington-Former President Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to stop transferring some White House documents housed in the National Archive to the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The former president appealed a decision from a three-judge panel in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which earlier this month denied Trump’s efforts to protect his records from January 6 House select committee.

The DC Circuit temporarily suspended the release of records to the committee and gave the former president 14 days to ask the Supreme Court to weigh in.

In the filing asking the magistrates to take up his dispute, Trump’s lawyers argued the investigators’ request for the records was “too extensive” and “not tied to any valid legislative intent.” The request, they continue, goes beyond congressional authority under the Constitution and the Presidential Records Act, which governs the records of presidents.

“The records of a former president were not freely distributed at the end of his term, even in Congress,” Trump’s lawyers told the court. “Except in exceptional instances, records are protected from disclosure for a long time after a president leaves office.”

Lawyers for the former president also argued that his White House records should be protected under the idea of ​​executive privilege, believing that certain presidential communications could be protected from investigation and kept confidential.

“Despite the clear precedent and the unambiguous dictates of the law, the DC Circuit upheld the Committee’s broad requests and refused to respect President Trump’s well -established claims of executive privilege,” the DC Circuit wrote. lawyers of the former president.

Trump’s lawyers told magistrates that the committee’s request for his record “should have been denied out of hand.”

“At stake is the ability of presidents – past, present, and future – to rely on executive privilege, separation of powers, and the Presidential Records Act to protect confidential presidential records of deliberations from premature production to political rivals, ”they said.

Trump sued the committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol in October after President Biden denied the former president’s insistence of executive privilege on documents sought by the panel. The House committee is seeking documents and communications connected to Jan. 6, including records related to Trump’s prepared and actual public statements from Nov. 3, 2020, to Jan. 20.

Since the former president filed the lawsuit, the National Archives has revealed that it has identified more than 1,500 pages related to the committee’s request. These include daily presidential diaries, the files of then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, several binders owned by then-White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, and White House-based discussed points accusing voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

Trump argued that about 750 of those documents, which are at the heart of the current case, should remain confidential under executive privilege claims.

“While executive privilege protections and restrictions on access to presidential records are qualified, it is critical that future presidents and their advisers understand the contours and perimeters of that privilege – and its exceptions – then of the end of the president’s term, ”Trump’s lawyers. sabi. “Otherwise, the deliberation process of advising presidents will be cold, because the advisers will no doubt understand that the audience of their deliberations is not only the president whose administration they serve but also Congress and their political rivals. “

Requests for information from the select committee, including Trump’s White House records, have denied many legal challenges, as former White House aides have refused to return the documents, citing the claims by the former president of executive privilege.

Meadows filed a lawsuit in federal court earlier this month seeking to overturn subpoenas issued by the House committee for testimony and telephone records, as did Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser. by Trump. Both Meadows and Flynn claimed that the subpoenas issued by the select committee were overbroad and had no legal purpose.

Trump himself has previously sought intervention from the Supreme Court in an effort to protect his financial records from congressional investigators and Manhattan district attorneys. The former president appointed three justices to the high court, expanding its conservative majority to 6-3.

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