US District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan has ruled that the House Select Committee will be allowed to access over 700 pages of 6 January Capitol riot-related documents beginning on Friday.
Tuesday night's ruling came as Chutkan rejected former President Donald Trump's request to block the release of the documents to the Democratic-dominated committee investigating the 6 January events. The 45th president's legal team intends to appeal the federal judge's verdict.
In the ruling, Chutkan claimed that "at bottom, this is a dispute between a former and incumbent president" and that "the Supreme Court has already made clear that in such circumstances, the incumbent's view is accorded greater weight".
She noted that Trump "does not acknowledge the deference owed" to Joe Biden's judgment as the current president, adding, "presidents are not kings, and [the] plaintiff is not president".
The judge pointed out that "the public interest lies in permitting — not enjoining — the combined will of the legislative and executive branches to study the events that led to and occurred on January 6, and to consider legislation to prevent such events from ever occurring again".
Bennie Thompson, chair of the House Select Committee probing the events of 6 January, has meanwhile touted Chutkan's ruling as "a big deal", insisting that Trump should stop behaving like a "spoiled brat".
"I look forward to getting this information. I look forward to our investigators going through it with a fine-tooth comb to make sure that our government was not weaponised against its citizens", Thompson told CNN.
He spoke a few weeks after Trump's legal team filed a lawsuit to challenge a decision by President Biden and the US National Archives to hand over the 6 January Capitol riot-related records to the House Select Committee.
This came amid the committee's efforts to subpoena the relevant documents, including call and video logs, schedules, as well as three pages of handwritten notes by former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
The lawsuit slammed the House request as being "almost limitless in scope", adding, "in a political ploy to accommodate his partisan allies, President Biden has refused to assert executive privilege over numerous clearly privileged documents requested by the committee".
6 January Capitol Riot
On 6 January 2021, a mob, including scores of Trump supporters, besieged the US Capitol in an attempt to prevent Congress from certifying the results of what the 45th president slammed as "the most corrupt elections" in American history.
Five people died during the riots, and dozens more were injured, including at least 138 police officers. Law enforcement authorities have since arrested about 600 individuals who took part in the Capitol riots, charging some of them with assaulting federal police officers.
28 October 2021, 16:08 GMT
Trump held a rally on 6 January outside the White House, where he promised supporters that he would not allow the election to be "stolen" from him.
Using his now-suspended Twitter account, the 45th president later urged his supporters "to stay peaceful" and "to go home", recording a video address on 7 January condemning the violence. Trump was then impeached for an unprecedented second time over accusations of "incitement of insurrection", but managed to evade conviction in the Senate.