(PatrioticPost.com)- President Joe Biden has once again decided not to let former President Donald Trump successfully claim executive privilege to bar some of his records from being released.
On Tuesday, Biden ordered that White House visitor logs from Trump’s time as president should be handed over to the House of Representative’s January 6 investigating committee. Trump had attempted to claim executive privilege over those records to prevent them from being turned over.
It’s another set of data and information the committee has been seeking to obtain from the National Archives, but that Trump has been fighting to keep private.
The visitor logs show all appointment information for any individual who was allowed to enter the White House on January 6, 2021 — the day that the attack on the U.S. Capitol building took place.
Trump claimed that he was due executive privilege over that information since he was president at the time of the attack. That’s something that Biden apparently considered, according to Dana Remus, the White House counsel.
However, in a letter she sent to the National Archives Monday, she wrote that the president ultimately decided it was “not in the best interest of the United States” to award Trump executive privilege in this case.
She added that, per routing policy, the Biden administration “voluntarily discloses such visitor logs on a monthly basis,” just as the Obama administration did before Trump took office. Because of that, the information Trump is seeking to keep private would be released publicly under Biden’s current policy.
Trump has been trying to withhold many documents from his time in the White House from the January 6 investigating committee. Ultimately, the Supreme Court decided that court dispute.
All sitting presidents and their staff are required under the Presidential Records Act to preserve all records with the National Archives. Outgoing presidents are then responsible for turning those documents over to the Archives once they leave office.
This isn’t the first time Biden has had to take up this issue, as he’s denied a few previous claims of executive privilege by Trump already. In the past, the president said he wouldn’t invoke executive privilege in regards to information sought by the House’s January 6 investigating committee unless completely necessary.
The House committee wants to learn more about Trump’s specific actions during January 6, 2021, while many of his supporters were storming the Capitol building.
The investigators are specifically looking at what parties were involved in organizing and financing the “Stop the Steal” rally that was held on the morning of January 6, before they marched to the Capitol building. At that rally, Trump told his supporters to “fight like hell.”
One of the key pieces of information the committee is looking for is how directly involved Trump was with the rally organizers — or whether any of his officials were involved, too.
They are hoping that they are able to shed some light on the manner through the various pieces of information and data they’re obtaining through the National Archives.
