Former President of the United States Donald Trump On Wednesday, he again tried to prevent congressional investigators from viewing White House records that he wanted to keep secret.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan refused to shelve her ruling from Tuesday, which allowed the House Committee to obtain records of the Trump White House related to the fatal attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6.
“This court will not effectively ignore its own reasoning,” she wrote.
Trump’s lawyers once asked Chutkan to suspend the execution of her ruling and appealed to a higher court. Trump filed a similar request to the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, but the court has not yet acted on his request.
The White House record of Trump’s attack on January 6 can be accessed by Congress, judge rules
The National Archives of the federal agency that keeps Trump’s White House records plans to submit hundreds of pages of documents to Congress on Friday, unless the U.S. District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals may issue an order.
The case may eventually enter the Supreme Court of the United States.
Chutkan’s decision allowed the House committee investigating the attack to access phone records, visitor logs, and other White House documents that Trump wanted to block.
The former Republican president argued that the materials requested by the committee were contained in a Administrative privilege This protects the confidentiality of some White House communications.
But Chutkan rejected this argument in her ruling on Tuesday, which apparently won Congress oversight.
“In the final analysis, this is a dispute between the previous president and the current president,” Chukan said in Tuesday’s order. “Moreover, the Supreme Court has made it clear that in this case, the views of incumbents are given greater attention.”
Chutkan said Trump “does not recognize that Biden’s judgment as the current president should be respected.” She referred to past examples of the president’s refusal to claim executive privileges, and rejected her claim that Trump’s executive privileges “permanently exist.”
“The president is not the king, and the plaintiff is not the president,” she said.
The committee said it needed the requested materials to understand Trump’s possible role in inciting riots, and his supporters aimed to prevent lawmakers from proving Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential victory.
Rep. Benny Thompson, who leads the House Committee, said in a statement after the ruling that these records are crucial to understanding the attack, “In my opinion, there is nothing more convincing for the public. The answer to the attack of democracy.”
On CNN, Thompson said Trump should stop acting like a “spoiled kid.”
Trump spokesman Taylor Budovic said on Twitter on Tuesday night that the case was “destined to be decided by the Court of Appeals.” He added: “Trump remains committed to defending the Constitution and the Office of the President, and will witness this process.”
The White House stated that Chutkan’s opinion was “consistent with what the president has said about the riots”. Spokesperson Mike Gwen said: “It is absolutely vital to have a comprehensive statistics on the events that happened that day to ensure that similar things do not happen again.”
On January 6, 4 people were killed, one was shot and killed by the police, and the other three were due to natural causes. More than 100 policemen were injured in the attack. A Capitol police officer who was attacked by protesters died the next day, and four other policemen defending the Capitol committed suicide.
(Reporting by Jan Wolfe; additional reporting by Susan Heavey; editing by Scott Malone and Peter Cooney)
