1/6 Committee Says Trump Has No Executive Privilege To Block Documents

Members of the investigative Committee argue that Trump no longer enjoys the protection of executive privilege, encouraging the White House to push aside institutional concerns about sharing information with Congress and aid the panel in an investigation focused on what Democrats and a handful of Republicans have called an assault on democracy.

“It’s not really relevant because there’s no president involved — there’s no such thing as a former president’s executive privilege,” said Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.), a committee member who teaches constitutional law. “That’s extremely dilute and not really relevant.”

As soon as the 1/6 Committee comes for the Trump administration documents, the former president is going to try to claim executive privilege, and the Committee is going to sue him to get the records.

The House Select Committee wants to know what Donald Trump and members of his administration were doing as the Capitol was being attacked. 

The denial of the existence of former presidential executive privilege sets up an interesting legal confrontation. The legal standing for former president executive privilege is murky.

The possibility exists that the 1/6 Committee will prevail, but the Committee has several ways to get the information. They could use witnesses and other accounts from 1/6, but if Trump doesn’t have the ability to block documents, the Committee will get many of the missing pieces and be able to put together the role of the Trump administration in the 1/6 attack.