Trump Suing Jan 6th Select Committee, Nat’l Archives Over January 6th Documents

What a strange way for a completely innocent and transparent person to behave.

Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit seeking to block any transfer of documents to the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th riot has sought from the National Archives. The suit names both the committee and the Archives as defendants. It says the committee’s subpoena is “invalid because it has no power of investigation”. Trump claims in the lawsuit that the material should be “protected by executive privilege”, although Trump cannot legally invoke it now that he no longer occupies the Oval Office.

The House committee requested documents in March and August from Archives that it said were related to the Trump administration’s actions before, during, and after the January 6 riot at the Capitol, when a group of the former president’s supporters attacked the building in hopes of blocking his electoral defeat. Trump notified the archives that he formally asserted executive privilege.

President Joe Biden, however, concluded that the privilege should not apply. The White House Counsel, Dana Remus, said the documents “shed light on events within the White House on and about January 6 and bear on the Select Committee’s need to understand the facts underlying the most serious attack on operations of the Federal government since the Civil War.”

Many Republicans will say poignant words about C Powell today.

As a reminder, Powell called Trump a “liar” who skirted the Constitution and said he no longer called himself a Republican because of 1/6.

Honor him by standing for truth and supporting the January 6th Committee.

— Ana Navarro-Cárdenas (@ananavarro) October 18, 2021

The Trump lawsuit also said the Committee’s request for documents is “far too broad”, describing it as “almost limitless in scope” and in many aspects “with no reasonable connection to the events of that day.” It argued, as did several Trump lawsuits during the time he was in office, that Congress can obtain information only for the purposes of legislating since it has no general power of investigation.

See Also

The Federal Elections Commission is Investigating Jim Jordan Over Campaign Reports

Trump's lawsuit against Chairman Bennie Thompson and the Jan. 6 Committee is now public.

It's filed by Jesse Binnall, whose post-election conspiracy theories were shot down by a Nevada judge in December. pic.twitter.com/unisZfkJ4d

— Adam Klasfeld (@KlasfeldReports) October 18, 2021

Most see the lawsuit as a typical Trumpian tactic to delay any proceedings where he is positioned to look bad. The lawsuit was filed by an Alexandria, Va. lawyer, Jesse Binnall, who is representing Trump in four civil lawsuits filed over the Jan. 6 riot. He joined Texas attorney Sidney Powell in representing Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser. And he represented Trump in an unsuccessful lawsuit seeking to overturn President Biden’s victory in Nevada.