As widely expected, Donald Trump is taking his silly legal argument on blocking the release of his national archives records from the January 6th Committee all the way to the Supreme Court.
Former President Donald Trump turned to the Supreme Court Thursday in a last-ditch effort to keep documents away from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol led by his supporters.
Trump’s attorneys asked the Supreme Court to reverse lower court rulings against the former president, who has fought to block the records even after President Joe Biden waived executive privilege over them. The federal appeals court in Washington previously ruled the committee had a “uniquely vital interest” in the documents and Trump had “provided no basis” for it to override Biden and Congress.
The records include presidential diaries, visitor logs, speech drafts, handwritten notes “concerning the events of January 6” from the files of former chief of staff Mark Meadows, and “a draft Executive Order on the topic of election integrity,” according to a previous court filing from the National Archives.
Repeating arguments they made before lower courts, Trump’s attorneys wrote Thursday that the case concerned all future occupants of the White House. Their filing came on the day that an administrative injunction issued by the appeals court was set to expire.
Former presidents had “a clear right to protect their confidential records from premature dissemination,” Trump’s lawyers said.
“Congress cannot engage in meandering fishing expeditions in the hopes of embarrassing President Trump or exposing the President’s and his staff’s sensitive and privileged communications ‘for the sake of exposure,’ ” they added.
The House committee has said the records are vital to its investigation into the run-up to the deadly insurrection aimed at overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election. Before and after the riot, Trump promoted false theories about election fraud and suggested that the “real insurrection” was on Election Day, when he lost to Biden in an election certified by officials from both parties as fair.
Nice stinger at the end there from the AP's Mark Sherman and Nomaan Merchant.
In all seriousness however, the lower court decisions have ranged from "It's the current Chief Executive who makes these decisions" to "Trump is basically full of it and has no argument here."
What Trump has as an expectation is for the Roberts Court to construct him a new as yet seen right of refusal and protection over national archives documents, provided under law. I don't think they'll do it, because it'll expand to Biden when he's out of office too.
On the other hand, I expect if Trump does get control back, he'll dispense with the need for documents and just start putting people in boxes or in the ground.
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