A federal appeals court on Thursday ruled that former President Donald Trump’s White House records must be turned over to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
A three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said there is a “unique legislative need” for the records to be released and ordered the injunction barring their disclosure to be lifted in two weeks.
In a scathing 68-page opinion, the Democrat-appointed judges rejected Mr. Trump’s claim that he has a right to executive privilege over the records as a former president.
“The interests the privilege protects are those of the presidency itself, not former President Trump individually,” the opinion states.
The former president’s call logs and draft speeches are among the documents that the committee is seeking as part of its probe into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, in which a mob stormed the building in an attempt to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election results.
Mr. Trump sued the committee and the National Archives in D.C. federal court on Oct. 18 after President Biden waived executive privilege on the records.
The former president is expected to appeal Thursday’s decision to the Supreme Court. His attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The appellate judges include Patricia Millett and Robert Wilkins, both Obama appointees, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Biden appointee.
The appeals court ruled that the injunction that has prevented the National Archives from turning over the documents will expire in two weeks, or when the Supreme Court rules on an expected appeal from Mr. Trump, whichever is later. Lawyers for Mr. Trump can also ask the entire appeals court to review the case.
Trump spokeswoman Liz Harrington said after the ruling: “Regardless of today’s decision by the appeals court, this case was always destined for the Supreme Court. President Trump’s duty to defend the Constitution and the Office of the Presidency continues, and he will keep fighting for every American and every future Administration.”
The court, in Thursday’s ruling against Mr. Trump, also praised President Biden’s “calibrated judgement” in working with Congress and the Archives to weigh privilege concerns, saying it “bears no resemblance to the ‘broad and limitless waiver’ of executive privilege former President Trump decries.”
Biden had the Jan. 6 committee defer its requests for some of the early documents that might have posed privilege claims, and officials expect more documents in subsequent tranches will be subject to the same outcome.
The House committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
White House spokesman Mike Gwin said in response to the ruling, “As President Biden determined, the constitutional protections of executive privilege should not be used to shield information that reflects a clear and apparent effort to subvert the Constitution itself.”
At issue, the court said, is not that Mr. Trump “has no say in the matter” but his failure to show that withholding the documents should supersede Biden’s “considered and weighty judgment” that Congress is entitled to them.
The National Archives has said that the records Mr. Trump wants to block include presidential diaries, visitor logs, speech drafts, handwritten notes “concerning the events of January 6” from the files of former chief of staff Mark Meadows, and “a draft Executive Order on the topic of election integrity.”
Arguing for the committee, U.S. House lawyer Douglas Letter argued that the determination of a current president should outweigh predecessors in almost all circumstances and noted that both Biden and Congress were in agreement that the Jan. 6 records should be turned over.
• This article is based in part on wire service reports.
