Trump sues to block records requested by Jan. 6 committee
By Jacqueline Alemany, Tom Hamburger and Josh Dawsey,
Former president Donald Trump is suing to block the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol from receiving records for its inquiry into the events of that day as well as Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.
Trump and his attorneys argue that the records requests are overly broad and have no legislative purpose, and they criticize President Biden for not asserting executive privilege to block the handover of those documents.
“The Committee’s request amounts to nothing less than a vexatious, illegal fishing expedition openly endorsed by Biden and designed to unconstitutionally investigate President Trump and his administration,” the lawsuit reads. “Our laws do not permit such an impulsive, egregious action against a former president and his close advisors.”
The suit against the committee and the National Archives was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
The committee has signaled in recent days that it plans to be aggressive in its effort to secure information from Trump and his top aides. On Tuesday evening, the panel is expected to approve a criminal complaint against former Trump aide Stephen K. Bannon, who has declined to comply with a committee subpoena.
Trump’s office put out a statement saying that its legal arguments rest on three “pillars”: that the committee’s request serves no useful legislative purpose, such as informing the writing of a bill; that it undermines Trump’s executive privilege rights; and that the committee is not providing the former president’s team with sufficient time to review its records requests.
In florid terms, the 26-page complaint alleges that the committee seeks “to harass President Trump and senior members of his administration (among others) by sending an illegal, unfounded, and overbroad records request to the Archivist.”
The suit claims that the records requested have “no reasonable connection to the events of that day” and accuses Biden of refusing to assert executive privilege as “a political ploy” intended to injure Trump.
The suit was filed by Jesse R. Binnall, who worked on Trump’s failed attempts to contest the 2020 election results and who, along with attorney Sidney Powell, represented former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who was prosecuted by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.
“The former President’s clear objective is to stop the Select Committee from getting to the facts about January 6th and his lawsuit is nothing more than an attempt to delay and obstruct our probe,” committee Chair Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) and Vice Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said in a statement Monday evening. “Precedent and law are on our side.”
It has subpoenaed several former Trump aides and has said some are “engaging” with its investigators so the panel has not yet sought to file complaints against them as it plans to with Bannon. Trump has urged those aides not to cooperate with the committee.
Some Trump aides have scrambled in recent days to find lawyers to represent them, expecting protracted battles with the committee, according to people familiar with matter who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Others have begun considering the option of testifying but not commenting on any interactions with Trump.
Several Trump advisers described the suit as an opening gambit in an effort they expected to last many months, if not years.
New York University law professor Stephen Gillers called Trump’s lawsuit “a naked effort to delay the work of the Jan. 6 committee until the 2022 election.”
He noted that if Republicans take control of the House, they will disband the committee.
“How much longer will the courts tolerate such abuse without serious sanctions against Trump and his lawyers?” Gillers asked. “The credibility of the federal judiciary is at stake.”
Laurence H. Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard, called the suit a “very weak complaint” and scoffed at a key argument in the lawsuit.
“The idea that Congress has no legitimate purpose in making this request is almost insane. In fact, no purpose could be higher on the totem pole than protecting the Republic from a coup,” he said.
Tribe said that there was one part of the lawsuit that did not seem frivolous: The complaint about overbroad requests for documents. He predicted that a judge might agree to narrow the scope of requested documents.
Trump’s suit references in several spots the Mazars case, in which congressional Democrats were seeking personal financial information about Trump from his longtime accounting firm.
In July 2020, the Supreme Court ruled that the restrictions Trump proposed on congressional demands for private, nonprivileged information “risk seriously impeding Congress in carrying out its responsibilities.”
Still, the court put a hold on the congressional subpoenas, suggesting overreach on the part of the lawmakers, and sent the case back to a lower court.
In the Mazars decision, which was 7 to 2, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. lamented that it had to get involved in the first place, calling it “the first of its kind to reach this Court” and arguing the legislative and executive branches “managed for over two centuries to resolve such disputes among themselves without the benefit of guidance from us.”
The Supreme Court could soon find itself embroiled in a similarly unprecedented case of Congress seeking information from a former president.
Robert Barnes contributed to this report.
