The US Supreme Court rejects Trump’s offer to keep the Capitol’s siege register secret

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected former President Donald Trump’s request to block the release of White House records requested by the Democratic-led congressional panel investigating last year’s deadly attack on the Capitol by a mob of his supporters.

The decision means that the documents, which are held by a federal authority that stores state and historical records, can be disclosed even if litigation in the matter continues in lower courts.

Trump’s request to the judges came after the U.S. District Court of Columbia Court of Appeals on December 9 ruled that the businessman who became a politician had no reason to question President Joe Biden’s decision to allow the documents to be submitted to the House of Representatives selection committee.

Democratic Representative Bennie Thompson, chairman of the panel, and Republican Representative Liz Cheney, vice-president, called the action in the Supreme Court “a victory for the rule of law and American democracy.” The committee has already begun receiving some of the documents that Trump had hoped to keep, they added.

A Trump spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump and his allies have been waging an ongoing legal battle with the committee, which is trying to block access to documents and witnesses.

Trump has sought to invoke a legal principle known as executive privilege, which confidentially protects certain internal communications in the White House, a position rejected by lower courts.

The brief decision of the Supreme Court noted that the weighty question of whether a former president could assert an executive privilege claim did not have to be answered to resolve the case.

“Since the Court of Appeal concluded that President Trump’s claim would have failed even if he were the incumbent, his status as former president did not necessarily make a difference to the court’s decision,” the unsigned order states.

Only one of the nine members of the court, the Conservative judge Clarence Thomas, publicly noted that he did not agree with the decision.

The House committee has said it needs the records to understand what role Trump may have played in encouraging the violence that took place on January 6, 2021.

His supporters stormed the Capitol in a failed attempt to prevent Congress from formally certifying Biden’s 2020 presidential victory over Trump.

The committee has asked the National Archives, which holds Trump’s White House records, to produce visitor logs, telephone directories and written communications between his advisers.

Biden, who took office two weeks after the riot, has ruled that the documents belonging to the executive branch should not be subject to executive privileges and that their submission to Congress was in the nation’s best interests. Trump has argued that he can invoke executive privileges based on the fact that he was president at the time even though he is no longer in office.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan on November 9 rejected Trump’s argument, saying he had not acknowledged the “reverence” that Bidens decided the committee could access the minutes, adding: “Presidents are not kings, and plaintiffs are not president.”

The special committee consists of seven Democrats and two Republicans. The Supreme Court’s 6-3 Conservative majority includes three judges appointed by Trump, but it has not always been receptive to his wishes.

Last year, the court rejected his request to block the disclosure of his tax records as part of a criminal investigation in New York and also rejected attempts by Trump and his allies to overthrow the 2020 election.

Shortly before the riot, Trump repeated to a crowd of his supporters his false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him through widespread vote-rigging, and told them to go to the Capitol and “fight like hell” to “stop the theft”.

(REUTERS)