Donald Trump is seeking to stop records of his movements, meetings and telephone calls related to the insurrection of January 6 from being released to a committee investigating the attack, a representative of the National Archives said in a court filing.
The former president also wants a draft of a speech and handwritten notes by his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to be withheld from the select committee investigating the riot, in which Trump supporters who had gathered for a rally near the White House then marched on the US Capitol and stormed the building in an attempt to stop the certification of the 2020 election.
The filing disclosing records Trump is seeking to have withheld follows claims last week that several members of Congress were involved in planning an effort by Trump to overturn his election defeat and the demonstrations on January 6 that turned violent. Rolling Stone magazine reported that planners of the events said they had been in regular contact with Meadows.
The National Archives and Records Administration, an agency of the US government, receives records from an outgoing administration when a president leaves office. They usually remain sealed for five years though a president can request that certain types of records remain off-limits for 12 years.
Trump made this request in every category where this was possible, Billy Laster, the director of the White House liaison division at the agency, said in a court filing.
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However, a congressional committee can request access to them under a section of the 1978 law that established government ownership of presidential records. Laster said that when the archives notified Trump that it intended to release records to the committee in August, the former president claimed many of them were subject to executive privilege and should be withheld. After President Biden announced he would waive executive privilege on most of the documents being sought by the committee, Trump sued, asking a court to block their release, saying the request was tantamount to an “illegal fishing expedition”.
Dana Remus, the White House counsel, said the documents could “shed light on events within the White House on and about January 6”.
Insulting baseball gesture
Donald Trump and his wife Melania performed the “tomahawk chop” with thousands of fans of the Atlanta Braves in the fourth game of a baseball championship series in which the ritual has been criticised as insulting by some Native American groups (Will Pavia writes). Fans of the Braves, whose moniker derives from the name given to Native American warriors in the 19th century, have performed “the chop” since 1991.
Last week as the Braves prepared to face the Houston Astros, Fawn Sharp of the National Congress of American Indians called the chop a “degrading ritual”.
