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A FEDERAL JUDGE has rejected former president Donald Trump’s request to block the release of documents to the House committee investigating the 6 January Capitol riot.
In denying a preliminary injunction yesterday, US District judge Tanya Chutkan said Congress had a strong public interest in obtaining records that could shed light on a violent insurrection mounted by the former president’s supporters.
She added that President Joe Biden had the authority to waive executive privilege over the documents despite Trump’s assertions otherwise.
Barring a court order, the National Archives plans to turn over Trump’s records to the committee by Friday.
But Trump’s lawyers swiftly promised an appeal to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The case will likely eventually head to the US Supreme Court.
Chutkan wrote: “At bottom, this is a dispute between a former and incumbent President.
“And the Supreme Court has already made clear that in such circumstances, the incumbent’s view is accorded greater weight.”
Trump “does not acknowledge the deference owed” to Biden’s judgment as the current president, Chutkan said.
She noted examples of past presidents declining to assert executive privilege and rejected what she said was Trump’s claim that executive privilege “exists in perpetuity”.
“Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President,” she said.
According to an earlier court filing from the archives, the records include call logs, drafts of remarks and speeches and handwritten notes from Trump’s then-chief of staff, Mark Meadows.
There are also copies of talking points from then-press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and “a draft Executive Order on the topic of election integrity”, the National Archives has said.
Bennie Thompson, who chairs the House committee, told CNN yesterday that Chutkan’s ruling was “a big deal” and said Trump should stop behaving like a “spoiled brat”.
“I look forward to getting this information,” Thompson said.
“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.”
The nine-member House committee is investigating not just Trump’s conduct on 6 January — when he told a rally to “fight like hell” shortly before rioters overran law enforcement — but his efforts in the months before the riot to challenge election results or obstruct a peaceful transfer of power.
The committee has interviewed more than 150 witnesses and issued more than 30 subpoenas, including ones announced yesterday to McEnany and former top adviser Stephen Miller. It has not yet issued one for Trump.
The former president has repeatedly attacked the committee’s work and continued to promote unfounded conspiracy theories about the election.
In suing to block the National Archives from turning over documents, Trump called the House panel’s request a “vexatious, illegal fishing expedition” that was “untethered from any legitimate legislative purpose”.
Allowing the House to get access to his records would also damage executive privilege for future presidents, Trump’s lawyers argued.
But Chutkan said the “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 6 January, and to consider legislation to prevent such events from ever occurring again”.
Trump’s spokesperson Taylor Budowich tweeted last night that the case “was destined to be decided by the Appellate Courts”.
He added that “Trump remains committed to defending the Constitution & the Office of the Presidency, & will be seeing this process through”.
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1 in 2 people are either male or female
Surely that should be everyone is either male or female.
I’m 21 days smoke free :-)
Great keep it up its hard for you but well worth the effort !
Well done Aisling :)
Either make it illegal, or shut up about it. Useless story.
bollocks to that – how many hours are lost each year “outside puffing”. How many sick days a year in HSE?
They can’t afford to smoke anymore simple as…..
I’d be afraid to know the statistic of smokers in germany, nearly everybody smokes, young and old.
Yeah but there’s massive differences in Germany,
- Smoking adverts exist on billboards and bus stops
- Shops have adverts up in windows and behind the counter
- Cigs are openly for sale, one example is in Aldi where instead of sweets at the checklike like you have in Ireland they have cigs…hundreds of the things!
- Many streets have cig vending machines that can be used anytime.
Goes to show that Ireland has done something right,
As much as i dont like smoking its not illegal for god sake so i dont understand the point of the article…Who gives a sh*t!!
I’m all for the non-smoking campuses but the enforcement just isn’t there, if anyone has been to CUH you can hear that voice announcing that “Cork University Hospital is a smoke-free campus, the smoke from your cigarette is directly effecting patients in the breast cancer and cardiac unit overhead etc etc” but patients, staff and visitors still smoke there regardless, plenty porters bring the patients out for a smoke no bother!
Many (not ALL) smokers have no regard for anyone else, especially in places where people have health issues.
Anyone with asthma will tell you the problems that people smoking around them can cause, the last thing such a person needs is to walk through a cloud of smoke as they leave a hospital!\
Very true, Martin. I have to run the gauntlet of smoke every 4 weeks when attending the respiratory clinic. It’s ridiculous, but I do think it’s slowly improving.
The gauntlet of smoke?
Oh the humanity!!!
First world problems strike again.
I quite enjoyed mixing that particular metaphor, Alan ;)
You might say it’s a first-world problem, and possibly it is; if I had been born in the developing world I’d be dead long before now. Remember, though, this is a hospital. People shouldn’t have to risk their own health to any degree just to pass through the doors.
What a pile of drivel?
This is about spending more money to help HSE smokers quit. I know of one person who availed of this scheme… a complete waste of money as she still puffs 20-30 per day. If HSE staff want to quit let them do so with their own cash and not the tax payer.
I say they should fire all HSE staff that cannot keep their grubby yellow fingered mitts off of the cancer sticks for the 8 hours a day they are required to be at work.
Get a grip of yourself….smoking is a personal choice. Sack the nurses, then who would be there to look after the whingers like you? Now im going to make a lovely cup of tea & have a lovely cigarette to go with it.
No doubt you won’t be worrying about the medical services, hospital beds and hospital budgets that won’t be available for your children and relatives now or in the future when they need them, because the selfish, coffin nail addicted, people like yourself are using them all up – coughing up your lungs and polluting the place while you die slowly at huge expense to the taxpayer. That won’t worry you one little bit will it ?
Nope!! It sure won’t u pathetic do gooding whinge
Well when youre out dogooding and moralling bullshitting out of you,make sure and berate the fatties in supermacs with their clogged arteries,and the alcoholics taking up valuable breathing space,and the junkies,they all need hospital beds too,at least smokers will agree with you that its a disgusting addiction,but the fatties all go around miffed about why theyre fat,as if it was a fcuking mystery!
Well said Barry!!
U sound like you could do with a smoke, would u ever light up!!! Sorry I meant lighten up……
You sound like you could be paid for by the tobacco – profits before people – industry….
The tobacco industry could pay me all day long if they wanted, I’d be delighted!!!
U sound like you could do with a smoke, would u ever light up!!! Sorry I meant lighten up……
So?
have your say