The US Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected former President Donald Trump’s request to block the release of White House documents to the Congressional committee investigating last year’s Capitol Hill raid by Republican supporters.
With the decision, documents in the custody of the National Archives, responsible for government and historical records, can be released even if there is litigation on the issue in lower courts.
Since October of last year, the former president had sought to bar access to about 50 documents about his and his allies’ actions during the January 6 attack. Trump began with a formal request to the current US leader, Joe Biden, based on a legal doctrine called “executive privilege”, which preserves the confidentiality of certain White House records.
The measure allows the president to prevent the disclosure of certain information to the Legislature, the Judiciary or even the population.
After Biden’s denial, who defended that claiming this appeal did not serve “the best interests of the United States”, the Republican sought justice. The basis was the same, executive privilege, and Trump claimed in a District of Columbia court that the request for access to the papers would be “illegal, unfounded and vague”.
After the opening of the action, the process was full of back-and-forth. On Nov. 9, District of Columbia Judge Tanya Chutkan rejected the argument put forward by the Republican’s lawyers that telephone recordings, visitor records and other documents connected with his stay at the White House should not be forwarded to the committee.
Trump’s defense then appealed to the district’s Court of Appeals to have the decision on hold pending a decision on the appeal. Two days later, the court granted the request and ordered that the material not be turned over to the Congressional committee until the trial.
On December 9, however, the same court ruled that the former president had no legal basis to challenge Biden’s decision to release the documentation, which took the case to the Supreme Court.
Only one of the court’s nine judges favored Trump’s claim, conservative Justice Clarence Thomas. With the decision of the highest instance of Justice, the Congressional committee will now be able to receive the material. Any delay by the court in allowing disclosure could jeopardize the panel’s chances of obtaining the records and doing its job before the November legislative elections, as intended.
Republicans, who opposed the creation of the commission, are seeking to regain a majority in the House of Representatives. If they succeed, they could close the investigation into the January 6 attack. On the date, which went down in American history as one of the biggest attacks on democracy in the country, congressmen were gathered to certify the Democrat’s victory in the presidential election.
The committee investigating the invasion has closed in on Trump. Last year, congressmen subpoenaed Steve Bannon, a former Republican campaign strategist, Mark Meadows, a former chief of staff, Kash Patel, a former national security adviser, and Dan Scavino, director of social media at the White House. in the republican administration.
Bannon, at the time, said he would not comply with the subpoena issued to testify, which led to a contempt indictment. According to his lawyer, Robert Costello, the refusal was based precisely on the claim that Trump could invoke executive privilege to prevent Bannon’s testimony – the resource can also be used to protect the confidentiality of communications between White House officials.
The former president even used executive privilege in controversial situations when he was in the White House. In 2018, he barred senators from accessing more than 100,000 pages of records from the time when Justice Brett Kavanaugh, his Supreme Court nominee, worked for the George W. Bush administration.
On another occasion, in 2019, he vetoed the delivery to Congress of a report that investigated the suspicion that Russia had interfered in his favor in the 2016 election campaign.
Earlier this week, three of Trump’s lawyers were subpoenaed. Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis are expected to deliver documents and testify to the commission on February 8.
Representative Bennie Thompson, chairman of the committee, said in a statement that the panel expects lawyers to join 400 witnesses who gave their testimony during the investigation into the causes that led to the attack by Trump supporters.
In addition to the lawyers, the committee would have subpoenaed and obtained phone records from Eric Trump, son of the former president, and Kimberly Guilfoyle, fiancee of Donald Trump Jr., according to American broadcaster CNN. The two played an important role in trying to reverse the outcome of the election. This would be the first time the collegiate has subpoenaed members of the Trump family.
In addition to shaking the foundations of democratic institutions in the United States, the invasion of the Capitol, engineered by a crowd of supporters inflated by Trump’s fallacious speech about alleged fraud in the elections, left five dead and injured 140 police officers.
Since then, the Justice Department has indicted more than 725 people, of whom 165 have pleaded guilty and at least 70 have received sentences.
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