Former President Donald Trump filed a lawsuit Monday in DC District Court against the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection and the National Archives in an effort to keep records from his presidency secret by claiming executive privilege.
The lawsuit from Trump is an attempt to block the work of the House committee as it attempts to investigate his actions before and during the siege of the Capitol.
The court action also marks his latest effort in long and thorny several years of fighting requests from the Democratic-controlled US House.
The Biden administration has declined to assert executive privilege over the first tranche of Trump-era records, and Trump is currently opposed to the release of about 40 documents.
The lawsuit alleges that the House’s request for the documents “are unprecedented in their breadth and scope and are untethered from any legitimate legislative purpose.”
Trump’s team also calls President Joe Biden’s refusal to protect the documents “a political ploy to accommodate his partisan allies.”It also claims that the Presidential Records Act is unconstitutional if it is “read so broadly as to allow an incumbent President unfettered discretion to waive the previous President’s executive privilege, mere months following an administration change.”
The National Archives is slated to turn over the requested documents to Congress by early next month.
