Former President Donald Trump petitioned the Supreme Court on Thursday to keep White House records concealed from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Select Committee on Jan. 6.
For months, Pelosi’s partisan probe has sought about 700 pages of documents housed by the National Archives to investigate the administration and connect the Trump White House with the riot at the Capitol in January. President Joe Biden has repeatedly denied Trump’s request to keep White House records private from House investigators while lower courts have rejected the former president’s claims of executive privilege.
“The limited interest the Committee may have in immediately obtaining the requested records pales in comparison to President Trump’s interest in securing judicial review before he suffers irreparable harm,” wrote Trump’s legal team, adding a request that the Supreme Court put a hold on lower rulings, which would otherwise compel their release. “The records sought are in the custody and control of the [National Archives and Records Administration] and therefore are being preserved as a matter of law. The Committee has identified no reasonable justification for requiring the documents immediately.”
Pelosi’s investigators have demanded the records in an effort to implicate members of the Trump White House, including the president himself, in the riot on Jan. 6 after House Democrats impeached the president over the speaker’s own negligence in failing to secure the Capitol.
The Jan. 6 Committee escalated its activity this month when it recommended that former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows be held in contempt for refusing full cooperation with the probe’s intrusive demands. The full chamber ultimately voted 222-208 to approve the resolution, with Pelosi’s two hand-picked Republicans serving on the select committee, Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, being the only two GOP lawmakers to vote in favor. Meadows filed a lawsuit against Pelosi and members of the select committee before the vote over its demands, which the former senior Trump official said violated executive privilege.
Before Meadows began to resist cooperation with the weaponized probe, the former four-term House member turned over 6,000 pages of documents.
