Although the Jan. 6 House committee's decision is a significant victory, it could be hampered by an appeals court or the U.S. Supreme Court intervening to slow down the process. Trump wants to hide documents from investigators including files from Mark Meadows, former chief of staff, Stephen Miller, White House deputy counsel Patrick Philbin, and call and visitor logs.
The records could provide valuable insight for the Committee's investigators into Trump's long-running campaign to spread disinformation about the integrity and legitimacy of the 2020 election. They also reveal Trump’s attempt to use his administration to try to overturn the results.
Chutkan began her ruling by reciting Trump's long-running effort to create distrust in the election results. He also attempted to call his supporters to Washington to press them to deny his defeat to Joe Biden. With that backdrop, Trump supporters poured into the Capitol and attacked police officers, forcing Congress and Vice President Mike Pence out of safety. Since then, hundreds of rioters were arrested and charged with their involvement in the attack.
The Jan. 6 committee will examine Trump's responsibility for inciting the rebellion. It began its investigation over the summer by asking National Archives for large tranches of documents from Trump’s White House. The documents were presented to the committee by Joe Biden, the current president. Biden refused to invoke executive privilege in order to protect them from the committee.
Trump sued the Jan.6 committee and National Archives after Biden's decision. He claimed that he, as a former President, still had the right to claim executive privilege over the records, even though Biden disagreed. Trump claimed that this power is rooted in a Richard M. Nixon-era Supreme Court decision which found former presidents still have a "residual interest" in the confidentiality White House records.
Chutkan stated that the Nixon precedent does not help Trump's cause. The current president, who is the only "executive" sitting in that case, had not commented on Nixon's attempt to protect his records. Biden had already consented to give the documents to Jan. 6's committee, waiving confidentiality concerns due to the "unprecedented attack" on Congress.
"At the bottom, this is a dispute among a former President and an incumbent President. The Supreme Court has made it clear that the incumbent's point of view is given greater weight in these circumstances, Chutkan wrote, citing a Nixon-era ruling.
Chutkan also rejected Trump’s suggestion that she review each document individually to determine if it should be withheld by Jan. 6 investigators.
Chutkan stated that the court "...is not best placed to decide executive branch interests, so declines to interfere upon the executive function." "It must assume that the incumbent is best qualified to make those decisions for the executive branch."
She said that the court would not question [Biden]'s decision by undertaking a document to document review that would require it engage in a function reserved for the Executive.
Chutkan stated that she initially considered some of Jan. 6's requests for Trump records too broad during oral arguments last week. She mentioned requests for discussions of election and polling data back to April 2020. Chutkan reiterated that assertion in her ruling, but stated that the requests were still within the committee's authority to make.
She stated that "[W]hile some requests of the Select Committee are indeed broad, so is Congress' ability to obtain information."
One small victory for Trump was the agreement by Chutkan and Justice Department lawyers that some records requested by the committee, such as polling data, would not be classified as "presidential documents" and should therefore not be produced by National Archives. The judge also stated that "personal papers and communications" are included in that category. Although the committee could subpoena these records directly from Trump's office, it has so far not done so.
Chutkan mentioned a number of former presidents' decisions to waive executive privilege in matters of national importance. He noted that each time the incumbent president made a decision about what was best for the public, as Biden did here.
Chutkan stated that "the notion that the contemplated disclosure would gravely undermine the function of the executive branch" was refuted by his directive to the Archivist by the incumbent President and past Presidents who similarly waived executive privilege when dealing in matters of grave public interest such as the Watergate scandal and the Iran-Contra investigation and 9/11.
According to legal experts, Chutkan's ruling was a reflection of the very thin case Trump used to stop his records going to Congress.
"In the end, the judge came to the most logical conclusion that these requests, no matter how broad they might have been, were not wider than the Committee's authority, while the legal authorities claimed to be the former President were scarce to nonexistent," stated Kel McClanahan (executive director of National Security Counselors), which submitted its brief in support of the Jan. 6 committee's request for the documents.
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss. Chair of the House committee, he saluted this ruling.
He said, "We can only present facts." "Look, I'm glad we got a positive decision from the judge. This information shows that we are on solid footing. If someone is shouting so loud and hard, it's likely that they have something to hide. We can access the records and they will speak for themselves if we have them. As a committee we look forward to getting it. We'll let the evidence we gather determine guilt or innocence based on our findings."
