President Joe Biden on Tuesday tossed out ex-president Donald Trump’s efforts to shield records of who visited the White House on Jan. 6 last year.
White House counsel Dana Remus sent a letter to National Archivist David Ferriero telling him that Biden was rejecting his predecessor’s executive privilege claim over the visitor logs, which the House Jan. 6 Committee is seeking out in its investigation into the Capitol attack.
Remus pointed out that the Biden administration voluntarily releases its White House visitor logs “as a matter of policy,” as did the Obama administration.
“The majority of the entries over which the former President has asserted executive privilege would be publicly released under current policy,” the attorney wrote. “As practice under that policy demonstrates, preserving the confidentiality of this type of record generally is not necessary to protect long-term institutional interests of the Executive Branch.”
The letter instructed Ferriero to turn over the logs to the Jan. 6 committee 15 days after he notifies Trump of Biden’s decision, “unless prohibited by court order.”
The president’s decision deals yet another blow to Trump’s repeated attempts to block the committee from accessing certain White House records, primarily by trying to invoke executive privilege over them.
And while it’s almost guaranteed that Trump will drag Biden’s latest decision in front of a judge, the ex-president’s executive privilege gambit hasn’t had much luck in the courts either.
Read Remus’ letter below:
