A group for former Justice Department and White House officials is formally asking the Supreme Court not to comply with former President Trump’s efforts to hinder the House Select Committee’s investigation into Jan. 6.
The Hill reports:
The group of legal heavyweights, comprising a half dozen former White House and top Justice Department lawyers who served under Republican presidents, argued in an amicus brief that Trump’s assertion of executive privilege over his administration’s records is outweighed by congressional investigators’ pursuit of the facts surrounding the Trump-inspired insurrection.
“Congress is now investigating those events and determining how to prevent unsuccessful candidates from attempting to undermine our democracy in the future,” they wrote. “Amici believe that the documents at issue should be turned over given, among other things, the importance of the House investigation into the January 6th attack and the current president’s reasonable determination that executive privilege should not be asserted in this case.”
In their brief, they also argued that former President Trump’s argument the House panel lacks the required legitimate legislative purpose for requesting his administration’s records.
“It is difficult to imagine a more compelling interest than the House’s interest in determining what legislation might be necessary to respond to the most significant attack on the Capitol in 200 years and the effort to undermine our basic form of government that that attack represented,” they wrote.
Among the brief’s authors are Donald Ayer, who served in top Department of Justice (DOJ) roles under Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush; Peter Keisler, a high-ranking DOJ official under President George W. Bush and an associate White House counsel under Reagan; and Carter Phillips, an assistant to the solicitor general under Reagan and who regularly advocates before the Supreme Court.
However, Trump is not the only one that has worked to hamper the panel’s work. A number of former Trump administration officials, such as White House chief of staff mark Meadows and former strategist Steve Bannon refused to comply with the panel’s order and were later held in contempt of Congress.
Bannon’s trial is set to begin this summer.
