US President Donald Trump speaks during a retreat with Republican lawmakers at Camp David in Thurmont, Maryland, January 6, 2018.
Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images
Former President Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to block a demand for White House records from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot by a mob of Trump supporters.
The request came two weeks after two lower courts rejected Trump’s argument that the records are protected by executive privilege, a legal doctrine that allows some White House communications to be kept private.
President Joe Biden had declined to invoke privilege over the disputed documents.
The Supreme Court is not obligated to hear Trump’s case, which seeks to prevent the National Archives from giving the House committee hundreds of pages of records from the Trump White House.
Trump asked that until the Supreme Court decides whether to take his case, it blocks the records from being sent to the panel in the meantime.
Trump’s lawyers, in their petition seeking review by the Supreme Court, said the House committee’s “request implicates important constitutional and statutory concerns arising from the Presidential
Records Act, separation of powers, and executive privilege.”
“A former President has the right to assert executive privilege, even after his term in office,” the petition argues. “Congress may not rifle through the confidential presidential papers of a former President to meet political objectives or...
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