The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the US Capitol could soon be getting its first taste of a set of files it has chased for months: Trump’s presidential records from the period surrounding the insurrection by his supporters a year ago.
According to the DOJ’s Tuesday filing in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the National Archives was to give the Select Committee four pages of documents from a “fourth tranche” over which Trump has attempted to exert executive privilege and block them from release.
“This Court specifically stated in its December 9, 2021 decision, however, that its administrative injunction encompassed only records from the first three tranches, which were the only tranches at issue in the appeal,” the filing notes.
The fourth tranche includes six pages of documents, but two won’t be released yet due to their similarity to other documents already enjoined. The House committee has sought some 700 pages from Trump overall.
Trump’s lawyer, Jesse Binnall, on Wednesday threatened to hold the DOJ in contempt. He argued the Supreme Court, to whom Trump appealed earlier this month, should decide the status of those documents, not the DOJ, according to CNBC.
The committee has been gathering information for months on the planning and execution of the “Stop the Steal” rally on January 6, 2021, hosted by Trump outside the White House, which preceded the assault on the Capitol At the rally, Trump urged thousands of his supporters to prevent the Democrats from “stealing” the November 2020 election, insisting his electoral loss to Joe Biden had been achieved by fraud. Thousands stormed the Capitol, where Congress was certifying the election results, temporarily sending lawmakers fleeing to safety and sacking the building.
Five people died in the attack, including a US Capitol Police officer and a woman shot by a USCP officer outside the House chamber while she was attempting to break through the door. The officer was cleared of any wrongdoing in the incident.
Many of those subpoenaed by the Select Committee for documents or testimony have refused to cooperate. Some have even been held in contempt of Congress, including Trump’s ex-chief adviser and former Breitbart editor Steve Bannon, and Trump’s chief of staff at the time, Mark Meadows.