WASHINGTON (CN) — A federal appeals panel on Thursday rejected former President Donald Trump’s attempt to withhold nearly 800 pages of documents regarding the Capitol riot from a House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.
“On the record before us, former President Trump has provided no basis for this court to override President Biden’s judgment and the agreement and accommodations worked out between the political branches over these documents,” U.S. Circuit Judge Patricia Millett wrote for the three-judge panel in a unanimous 68-page opinion.
During oral arguments nine days ago, Millett, joined by U.S. Circuit Judges Robert Wilkins and Ketanji Brown, appeared skeptical that Trump’s assertion that he has executive privilege — or the right to shield documents from the public’s view — overrides President Joe Biden’s decision to decline claiming executive privilege for the documents.
The constitutional controversy is the first of its kind, as the Supreme Court has ruled that former presidents do have some sort of executive privilege over their documents, but it’s unclear if that privilege can override a sitting president’s decision.
Jackson noted that the Presidential Records Act, which governs how White House records are handled after a president leaves office, doesn’t provide any guidance on how to handle lawsuits like Trump’s.
The panel’s ruling on Thursday upheld a lower court’s ruling, which said that Biden is “best positioned” to evaluate the interests of the executive branch, and that there is a strong public interest in accessing the documents.
While Trump has called the investigation a “vexatious, illegal fishing expedition,” the Jan. 6 Select Committee — and now two federal courts — say that the records are necessary to understand what happened that day.
“Both branches agree that there is a unique legislative need for these documents and that they are directly relevant to the committee’s inquiry into an attack on the Legislative Branch and its constitutional role in the peaceful transfer of power,” Millett wrote.
Millett also noted that Trump had a clear connection to the events that happened on Jan. 6, and the Jan. 6 Select Committee has been able to demonstrated that linkage.
“A court would be hard-pressed under these circumstances to tell the presidents that he has miscalculated the interests of the United States, and to start an interbranch conflict that the president and Congress has averted,” the opinion states.
Trump’s lawyers have 14 days to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.
The decision comes as the latest installment in a fight to disrupt the House’s investigation into the circumstances and events leading up to Jan. 6, as several Trump aides have also declined to cooperate with the investigation. On Wednesday, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows sued the committee in an attempt to block two subpoenas for his personal phone and email records.
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