Former President Trump on Tuesday asked an appeals court to shield him from congressional investigators, invoking what he calls his “constitutional right” to keep his White House files secret from the House Select Committee investigation the Jan 6 insurrection that he incited.
In a motion filed with the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, Trump lawyers are urging the court to overturn a judge’s ruling that would allow the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to hand over hundreds of pages of White House records to the House Jan. 6 Select Committee.
Trump’s legal team argued that the ruling from U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan is essentially a “rubber stamp” for the committee and would upend the balance of powers between the executive and legislative branches, according to The Hill.
“The stakes in this case are high,” the filing reads, The Hill reports “A decision upholding the Committees’ request to NARA would have enormous consequences, forever changing the dynamics between the political branches. It is naïve to assume that the fallout will be limited to President Trump or the events of January 6, 2021. Every Congress will point to some unprecedented thing about ‘this President’ to justify a request for his presidential records.”
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“If the Committee’s request is upheld, there would be no limitation on the presidential records Congress could review,” they wrote in the filing before adding: “In these hyper-partisan times, Congress will increasingly and inevitably use this new weapon to perpetually harass its political rival.”
As noted by The Hill, “Trump’s lawyers have argued that the Biden administration’s refusal to honor the former president’s assertions of executive privilege infringes on his constitutional rights.”
But Judge Chutkan ruled last week that Trump as a former president has little power to interfere in such an exchange between the sitting president and Congress.
“The legislative and executive branches believe the balance of equities and public interest are well served by the Select Committee’s inquiry,” the judge wrote. “The court will not second guess the two branches of government that have historically negotiated their own solutions to congressional requests for presidential documents.”
