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White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Friday afternoon that President Joe Biden refused to assert his privilege over Trump documents sought by the Jan.6 select committee. During the White House press briefing, Psaki said that “the president has determined that an assertion of executive privilege is not warranted for the first set of Trump White House documents provided to us by the Archives national “.
“As we said before, this will be an ongoing process and this is just the first set of documents,” she said. “And we will assess questions of privilege on a case-by-case basis, but the President has also made it clear that he believes it is of the utmost importance to Congress and the American people to have a full understanding of the events of this. that day to prevent it from happening again. “
In a letter to David Ferriero, the U.S. Archivist, White House attorney Dana Remus writes that the decision not to assert executive privilege applies to a first installment of documents that have been provided to attorneys for the White House and Trump in September. Remus writes that there are other documents that the National Archives have provided to the White House for review and that a decision on whether to invoke executive privilege on these documents has yet to be made.
Remus wrote in the letter that the request comes under “unique and extraordinary circumstances”.
“Congress is examining an attack on our Constitution and democratic institutions provoked and stoked by those who have sworn to protect them, and the conduct under investigation extends far beyond typical deliberations regarding the proper fulfillment of the President’s constitutional responsibilities.” , Remus wrote. “Constitutional protections of executive privilege must not be used to protect, either Congress or the public, information that reflects a clear and apparent effort to subvert the Constitution itself.”
The letter concluded: “We understand that the former president feels that executive privilege should be invoked with respect to a subset of the documents. When you notify us of such a statement, we will respond accordingly.
The House select committee launched a massive investigation on January 6. As part of this, the panel sent requests for information to a number of federal agencies, including the National Archives, the Trump administration’s custodian of records in the White House.
The committee requested “all documents and communications within the White House” that day, including call logs, schedules and meetings with senior officials and outside advisers, including Rudy Giuliani.
The White House said last month that Biden did not expect to assert executive privilege to prevent these documents from being seen by the committee.
“We take this matter very seriously,” Psaki said at a press briefing on September 24. “The president has already concluded that it would not be appropriate to invoke executive privilege.”
In August, Trump threatened to invoke executive privilege in a bid to prevent the House select committee from obtaining the massive slice of documents he demanded from several US government agencies, despite his successor having the last word about information sharing.
This is a breaking story and will be updated.
CNN’s Jeremy Diamond, Maegan Vazquez, and Kevin Liptak contributed to this report.
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