Reports show that Trump has chosen former chief of staff Mark Meadows along with the defense lawyers form his first impeachment to handle the requests for his White House records. The records are now the property of the National Archives and Records Administration.
Fox News reports:
Besides Meadows, the representatives include Pat Cipollone, former White House counsel; John Eisenberg, former National Security Council legal adviser; Steven Engel, who headed the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel; and Patrick Philbin, Scott Gast, and Michael Purpura, who all served as deputy White House counsels and defended Trump during his impeachment trial, the outlet reported, citing the National Archives press office.
“The people on this list were the same lawyers from the White House counsel’s office who took extreme positions against Congress and refused to produce docs in the first impeachment,” Neil Eggleston, former White House counsel in the Obama White House, told the outlet. “We can only hope that they’ll recognize the duty of the administration to cooperate in the second.”
Business Insider reported the current White House, Congress and the judiciary have access to the records but Trump’s representatives can try to withhold it by claiming executive privilege as his lawyers did to the House during the first impeachment.
The records could also be integral to any other legal issues Trump faces post-impeachment.
All presidents chose representatives to handle administration records however Trump’s choices are especially interesting due to the fact he faces a second impeachment trial now that he has left office.