In the United States, the federal appeals court granted, on Thursday (11), the request of former President Donald Trump to stop the release of important records of the White House, during his presidency, to the House committee that investigates the January 6 attack on the United States Capitol.
Three judges on the US Court of Appeals for the Washington DC Circuit, all appointed by the Democrats, issued the interim injunction in response to Trump’s latest request, ahead of the Friday deadline to turn in an initial batch of 46 records, including : house call logs, visitor logs, draft speeches, and three handwritten memos from then Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows.
Judges Patricia Millett and Robert Wilkins, both Obama nominees, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Biden nominee, review the appeals panel considering Trump’s request.
Jackson, perhaps best known for his decision in 2019 that former White House adviser to Trump, Don McGahn, should serve a congressional subpoena on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, is considered one of the top options for the Supreme Court if there is a vacancy during Biden’s term.
The three-judge panel asked attorneys for Trump, Congress and the Biden administration to present their summaries before oral arguments were heard on 30 November.
“The purpose of this administrative injunction is to protect the court’s jurisdiction to address the appellant’s claims of executive privilege and is in no way to be construed as a decision on the merits,” the panel wrote in a two-page order.
In total, more than 700 documents from Trump’s presidency were expected to be delivered by the National Archives to the committee in the coming weeks.
Judge Tanya Chutkan twice rejected Trump’s offer of an injunction to prevent the National Archives from complying with the document request, noting in a Wednesday night ruling that Trump’s lawyers did not present new legal arguments or new facts to altering your previous decision that you held executive privilege belongs to the office – not the individual.
“In this appeal, the Court will consider important new first-impression constitutional issues relating to the separation of powers, presidential records and executive privilege,” Trump’s lawyers wrote on Thursday.
In a decision on Tuesday, Chutkan wrote: “The presidents are not kings and the Claimant is not the president.”
The former president filed a lawsuit last month in DC District Court, alleging executive privilege and claiming that the House’s requests for documents are “unprecedented in their breadth and scope” and illegitimate.
The Biden White House refused to step in to block access to Trump’s records. The Biden administration said in a document to Chutkan that Trump, like the former president, “has no personal interest in the records” and that the decision by the Biden White House to allow these presidential records to go to Congress should be upheld.
On Wednesday, the House committee wrote that it needs Trump’s White House records quickly so it can continue investigating the Congressional attack.
“The potential harm to the public is immense: our democratic institutions and a central feature of our democracy – the peaceful transfer of power – are at stake,” the committee wrote. It added that a delay would hamper its ability to “timely complete a comprehensive investigation and recommend effective corrective legislation.”
(Text translated, read original in English here)
Reference: CNN Brasil
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