Donald Trump lost his latest legal battle on Thursday when he tried to block information from the House committee. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled against the former president's request for an injunction blocking the National Archives from turning over White House documents.
President Joe Biden had waivers of executive privilege over the materials. The previous president objected to the release of key documents, but the judges ruled that Trump had not shown that the presidency would be hurt by it.
The court found that Trump had failed to demonstrate any particularized harm that would arise from disclosure, any distinct and superseding interest in confidentiality attached to these particular documents, or any other reasoned justification.
The balance of interests and equity is in favor of disclosure, and former President Trump has failed to do so. The district court denied a preliminary injunction as to the documents in the first three phases of the case because President Biden decided that a claim of executive privilege is not justified.
The precedent that gave more weight to claims of executive privilege by the current president than the former is a good sign. The panel allowed a temporary administrative injunction against the disclosure of the documents to remain in effect for Trump to appeal to the Supreme Court.
The D.C. Circuit ruled that the request for information about the worst attack on the seat of government since the War of 1812 is necessary for the House of Representatives to do their work.
Under these circumstances, a court would be hard-pressed to tell the President that he has messed up the interests of the United States.
Even if the courts were to second-guess the sitting president and the House of Representatives on behalf of a former president who is now a private citizen, Trump's request would fail on its own terms.
According to Millett, the interests of disclosure advanced by President Biden and the January 6th Committee far exceed his generalized concerns for Executive Branch confidentiality.
The panel was concerned that Trump was asking the court to block production of the documents without actually explaining why. The current president rejected the general claim that it would be in the best interests of the executive branch. As Millett wrote.
Trump has not found a need for confidentiality related to the documents in question. He hasn't presented arguments about the substance of President Biden's and Congress's decisions. He has not shown that the content of any particular document does not matter to the Committee. He claims that Congress and the Committee have no legitimate legislative interest in an attack on the Capitol, and that President Biden and the House have ulterior motives. It is impossible for this court to find any chance of success because that falls short of his burden.
The panel rejected the idea that the court must go through each document individually to make its own determination about whether Trump or Biden's view of executive privilege should win out.
If the court should look through the documents in an effort to explain why Biden made the decision, he gets the law backwards. The former President had to explain why he didn't tell the court about the documents because he had asserted the importance of confidentiality. He can't leave it to the court to argue for him.
The significance of the Jan. 6 committee's work was recognized by the panel. It was acknowledged that the disaster may have been caused by Trump or other executive branch officials.
The Committee is investigating a singular event in this nation's history, in which there is a sufficient factual predicate for inferring that former President Trump and his advisors played a relevant role.
The events of January 6th exposed the fragility of those democratic institutions and traditions that we had perhaps come to take for granted, and that is why Millett closed with lofty language recalling Benjamin Franklin's admonition that the Constitutional Convention had provided Americans "a Republic, if you can keep it".
If the Supreme Court agrees with Thursday's decision, it will be a huge blow to witnesses who have sought to hide testimony. The Department of Justice has charged former White House chief of staff MarkMeadows with criminal contempt of Congress after he ended a cooperation deal with the committee. If the courts allow Biden to waive executive privilege over these documents, they should also allow him to decide if the witnesses should give sworn testimony.
The documents include drafts of speeches, an executive order and handwritten notes.
