Joe Biden is denying yet another executive privilege claim by Donald Trump, who is attempting to utilize the power to conceal White House visitors' log from a House select committee investigating the Capitol disturbance on January 6.
Biden's White House Counsel Dana Remus wrote to the National Archives on Tuesday, telling the agency's archivist, David Ferriero, that the data should be sent to the panel within 15 days.
Biden Orders Trump Visitor Logs Turned Over to Jan. 6 Panel
The committee will be able to see who was at the White House on January 6, 2021, when a mob of Trump supporters destroyed the Capitol. To avoid future assaults, the panel is piecing together a minute-by-minute narrative of what transpired that day. The logs will be delivered to the committee in 15 days.
Biden's waiver comes after making a similar step on Oct. 8, allowing the committee to see hundreds of pages of Trump-era presidential records. Trump had used presidential privilege to keep hundreds of pages of records secret and had launched a federal lawsuit to block them from being released.
National Archivist David Ferriero informed Biden that Trump had invoked presidential privilege on the visitor logs on January 31. In a letter dated Tuesday, Biden's White House lawyer, Dana Remus, stated that the president waived privilege for the logs, according to USA Today.
Ferriero said he wants to give the disputed papers to the select committee on March 3, "unless barred by court order," in a letter to Trump on Wednesday.
Last year, Trump's effort to establish executive privilege over a separate group of papers requested by the select committee, which is examining what drove a mob of hundreds of Trump supporters to rush the Capitol, was rejected by Biden's White House.
Trump fought in federal district court and in a US appeals court to prevent the release of the more than 700 pages of White House papers but lost both cases. Trump's appeal was dismissed by the Supreme Court last month, and the materials were given to the committee from the National Archives a few days afterward.
Ferriero has asked President Biden's opinions on the disclosure of those materials to the Select Committee, as well as the former President's claims of privilege, according to Remus' letter of Tuesday.
Like former President Barack Obama's administration, she pointed out that the Biden administration willingly provided White House visitor logs every month. After a lawsuit, the Trump administration agreed to provide a trove of visitor logs that it had previously refused to share, CNBC reported.
January 6 Committee Urges Six More People To Testify
In January 2022, the panel received records from the Archives, and earlier this month, the panel received 15 boxes taken from his Mar-a-Lago property. Presidents are required by law to keep documents relevant to their administration's activities, although the National Archives has little enforcement authority.
According to one officer at the National Archives, the Presidential Records Act works more like a gentleman's agreement. Because of the major national security dangers and privacy concerns of the hundreds of thousands of visitors each year, the Trump administration announced in April 2017 that their logs would be kept secret.
The National Archives acknowledged in a statement that some of the Trump administration materials turned over to the select committee last month were taped together by personnel because they had been torn up. While they did not specifically accuse Trump of ripping them, his well-known behaviors imply he was the one responsible for the ripping.
Several publications, stories, and former Trump workers have claimed that Trump would trash documents and files while in office despite his obligation to preserve all records for the Archives. Some of the papers would be ripped up, while others would be sent to the Pentagon in a burn bag for disposal.
The House January 6 committee issued subpoenas to six additional persons in Trump's orbit on Tuesday, alleging that they were all involved in some manner in a conspiracy to install substitute electors to dispute Biden's victory.
Two Trump campaign members and four high-ranking GOP officials from swing states will be forced to testify about their conduct leading up to the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot, as per Daily Mail.
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