Former President Donald Trump has asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to issue a temporary "administrative" injunction to prevent White House records from being given to the House Jan. 6 select committee.
The latest attempt to stop the National Archives from giving the records to Speaker Nancy Pelosi's partisan committee came a day after U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan declined to put on hold her ruling from Tuesday allowing the committee to obtain records relating to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
"Just in: Trump has now asked the DC Circuit for a temporary 'administrative' injunction to stop the Archives from turning over his White House records to the Jan. 6 committee (set to happen tomorrow) while he pursues a full appeal," Buzzfeed legal reporter Zoe Tillman tweeted late Thursday morning.
"According to this filing, the Jan. 6 committee and the National Archives aren't taking a position on Trump's request for a temporary administrative injunction. The parties are jointly asking the circuit to set a more expedited briefing schedule on the main appeal," Tillman said in a follow-up tweet.
Trump’s lawyers wrote in the filing to the appeals court that without a stay, the former president would "suffer irreparable harm through the effective denial of a constitutional and statutory right to be fully heard on a serious disagreement between the former and incumbent President."
The National Archives is scheduled to give Congress hundreds of pages of documents on Friday.
Chutkan's decision allowed the House committee investigating the attack to access telephone records, visitor logs, and other White House documents that Trump wants blocked.
The former president had argued that the materials requested by the committee were covered by executive privilege, which protects the confidentiality of some White House communications.
The White House on Thursday also notified a lawyer for Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff, that Biden would waive any executive privilege that would prevent Meadows from cooperating with the committee, according to a letter obtained by the AP. The committee has subpoenaed Meadows and more than two dozen other people as part of its investigation.
His lawyer, George Terwilliger, issued a statement in response saying Meadows "remains under the instructions of former President Trump to respect longstanding principles of executive privilege.”
The committee created by Pelosi, D-Calif., is investigating events surrounding the Capitol attack.
Committee Chair Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and committee members — including anti-Trump Republicans Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., and Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill. — want the materials to understand whether Trump played a role in inciting protesters aimed at blocking certification of the Electoral College vote that gave President Joe Biden victory against Trump in the 2020 election.
Material from Reuters and The Associated Press was used in compiling this report.
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