It seems that the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the US Capitol will have to wait bit longer to obtaining Trump’s White House records from the National Archives.
An administrative injunction was issued on Thursday by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to temporarily block the Committee from accessing those documents, additionally scheduling the oral arguments on the release of said documents on November 30.
The court stressed that they are not ruling on the validity of Trump’s claims and they’re only allowing time for legal arguments on a longer injunction to be made.
The administrative injunction came nearly 24 hours before the Committee’s deadline concerning the White House records on November 12, 6 p.m.
The three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals that has issued the injunctions includes Judges Patricia Millett and Robert Wilkins, appointed by former US President Barack Obama, as well as Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was appointed by US President Joe Biden.
Only a day before, the House Select Committee confirmed its request to get Trump’s White House records – including visitor logs, speech drafts and White House call logs- in order to complete its probe and recommend remedial legislation aimed at preserving democracy.
Filing the request with the appellate court Thursday morning to stop the transfer of the first wave of documents, Trump’s legal team argued that the Select Committee’s request was illegitimate and unprecedented in their breadth and scope and that the release before oral arguments would prematurely destroy the confidentiality of the records.
They wrote in their filing that Trump has the right to be heard and to seek judicial intervention, pointing that executive privilege should be applicable since he was in office at the time of the deadly riot.
That right applies in cases when disagreement arises between the incumbent and former Presidents regarding congressional requests and executive privilege.
Lower courts have previously refused that same argument, with US District Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled against it twice earlier this week, emphasizing that that “Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President.”
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