WASHINGTON — The White House on Monday rejected another executive privilege request by former President Donald Trump over documents sought by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
In a letter obtained by NBC News, White House counsel Dana Remus told the National Archives that President Joe Biden has determined that Trump's effort to keep a new batch of Jan. 6 records out of Congress' hands "is not in the best interests of the United States."
She added, "Accordingly, President Biden does not uphold the former President's assertion of privilege."
CNN first reported the letter.
Trump sued last week to block the Jan. 6 committee — seven Democrats and two Republican — from obtaining the first batch of documents from the archives. The lawsuit argues that the committee has no power of investigation and that therefore its subpoena is invalid. Trump also insisted that the records are protected by executive privilege.
The House committee requested documents in March and August from the archives that it said were related to the previous administration's actions before, during and after the January riot, when a group of Trump's supporters attacked the building in hope of blocking his electoral defeat. After those requests, Trump notified the archives that he was formally asserting executive privilege.
Biden, however, concluded that the privilege should not apply in this instance. Remus wrote in an Oct. 8 letter that the documents "shed light on events within the White House on and about January 6 and bear on the Select Committee's need to understand the facts underlying the most serious attack on the operations of the Federal government since the Civil War."
Biden administration officials have said they plan to consider the requests from the committee case by case.
