The elected US president wants to prevent the investigative committee investigating the attack on the Capitol on January 6 from taking a closer look at his role in the excess of violence.
Former US President Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit with the Supreme Court over the release of documents in the course of the investigation into the attack on the Capitol. Trump’s attorneys said Thursday that the House Special Committee’s request was “extraordinarily far-reaching” and an “unprecedented encroachment on the privilege of the executive branch.” The committee reacted with incomprehension to Trump’s renewed attempt to keep the documents under lock and key. “Delay would seriously hurt the special committee and the public,” it said in a statement. You need the requested documents now to be able to determine the direction of the investigation.
Trump’s application to the Supreme Court came two weeks after the Columbia Circuit District Court of Appeals ruled that the former president had no basis to contest current President Joe Biden’s decision. Biden had previously stated that the files owned by the executive branch should not come under executive privilege in this case and that it was in the best interests of the nation to hand them over to Congress.
The House of Representatives Special Committee has asked the National Archives, the US agency that keeps Trump’s files in the White House, to provide visitor logs, telephone logs and written exchanges between its advisors. The committee said it needed the records to understand what role Trump may have played in the storming of the Capitol on January 6 this year.
Trump has announced a press conference for the anniversary of the Capitol storming on January 6, marking the start of the congressional election campaign. The subject of the appearance at his property in the US state of Florida are the events of that day, it said in a statement on Tuesday. In it, the Republican repeated without evidence that the presidential election of November 2020 had been manipulated.