The special committee investigating the Capitol storming early this year on behalf of the US House of Representatives is allowed to view White House documents from the period before the storm. This was decided by a federal judge on Tuesday, international news agencies report. She has rejected the request of former President Donald Trump to block the release of the documents. According to the judge, it is of “public interest” that the committee can study the documents, in order to prevent events such as those on January 6 “ever taking place again”.
Trump submitted his petition to the court last month, arguing that a president should be able to keep certain documents confidential. This so-called ‘executive privilege’ only applies to current presidents, but according to Trump’s lawyers, a former president should also be able to have this power. Current President Joe Biden said earlier that the exception rule does not apply to Trump, because the storming is an “exceptional event”. The judge ruled that the current president is the best judge of whether the privilege should be lifted.
From November 12, the special committee will be able to view telephone data, handwritten notes from Trump and transcribed confidential conversations with employees. In total, it concerns about seven hundred pages, which are stored in the US National Archives. It is not known from which period all released documents date. Trump’s attorneys have said they will immediately appeal to the Federal Appeals Court in the District of Columbia, which includes Washington.
In recent days, the commission has subpoenaed several former Trump employees for their role in the storming of the Capitol. Monday the committee reported that it has asked, among others, Michael Flynn, briefly Trump’s national security adviser, to make a statement. Tuesday the committee announced that, among others, Kayleigh McEnany, former White House press spokesman, and Stephen Miller, former Trump adviser and speechwriter, were also subpoenaed. According to Bennie Thompson, chairman of the committee, Trump’s closest associates are partly responsible for the storming because of a “campaign full of misinformation”.
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