Former President Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit against the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riot as well as the National Archives, in an effort to stop documents on the event from being released.
Trump in his suit filed on Monday in DC District Court is claiming executive privilege.
It represents a challenge to President Joe Biden’s refusal earlier this month to assert executive privilege on behalf of Trump on the first batch of the documents on the insurrection.
Trump’s suit states that Biden’s refusal to protect the documents is ‘a political ploy to accommodate his partisan allies’.
The suit claims that the House’s request for the documents is ‘unprecedented in their breadth and scope and are untethered from any legitimate legislative purpose’.
It also argues that the Presidential Records Act is unconstitutional if it is ‘read so broadly as to allow an incumbent President unfettered discretion to waive the previous President’s executive privilege, mere months following an administration change’.
A statement from Taylor Budowich, the communications director for Trump and his Save America PAC, says that the ex-president ‘filed a lawsuit in defense of the Constitution, the Office of the President, and the future of our nation, all of which the sham Unselect Committee is trying to destroy.’
‘The fact is America is under assault by (House Speaker Nancy) Pelosi’s Communist-style attempt to silence and destroy America First patriots through this hyper-partisan and illegitimate investigation,’ the statement reads.
The National Archives is set to hand the initial set of documents to the House select committee in early November, after Biden waived executive privilege.
Formed in June, the committee requested ‘all documents and communications within the White House’ on January 6.
The batch includes records on Trump’s actions and communications that day, his rally calling on supporters to fight the election results and other meetings he had.
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