President Joe Biden on Monday shot down yet again his predecessor’s latest attempt to invoke executive privilege over a new round of White House records sought by the House Jan. 6 committee.
White House counsel Dana Remus told Archivist of the United States David Ferriero in a letter (which was obtained by CNN, NBC News and Politico) that Biden had “determined” that ex-president Donald Trump’s two new executive privilege claims over documents obtained by the White House on September 16 and September 23 are “not in the best interests of the United States, and therefore is not justified.”
Biden’s decision came after Trump filed a lawsuit against the House panel and the National Archives last week in a bid to block the records after Biden threw cold water on his executive privilege claim the first time earlier this month.
In her Monday notice to Ferriero, Remus repeats the assertion in her October 8 letter on Biden’s initial rejection of Trump’s request that “Constitutional protections of executive privilege should not be used to shield, from Congress or the public, information that reflects a clear and apparent effort to subvert the Constitution itself.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki has said Biden will decide on Trump’s executive privilege claims on a “case-by-case basis.”
Trump’s lawsuit claims that the House committee obtaining the records it seeks “would destroy the very fabric of our constitutional separation of powers and invade fundamental privileges designed to maintain the autonomy and functioning of the Executive Branch.”
Read the letter below:
